I love what Lee said about being yourself but staying on message. And Ali was right: choose your goals then plan backward from them.

Twitter is a tree: the more your water, fertilize, and prune it, the stronger it will be.

Here are a few quick tips:

· Actively prune inactive and spam accounts to keep the number of people you follow less than the number who follow you.
· Talk to thought leaders, especially people who have more followers than you. Engaging them in conversation will put you on the radar of all their followers.
· Give public "high fives." Compliment other people's work, writing, products, and thoughts, and 95% of them will like you.
· Use TweetDeck to create custom streams based on the niches you're target, and Buffer App to schedule the delivery of new content. I have to use Buffer; otherwise, I'll sometimes forget to post my stuff!
· Be yourself. I can't stress that one enough.
· Keep in mind that bigger isn't necessarily better. Again, what is your goal? If you're trying to network in your industry, than a smaller following might be appropriate. If you're selling info products, then you'll need lots of people entering your sales funnel.
· Have fun. I believe that people prefer to follow winsome people.
· Stay consistent. Your following will grow steadily as long as you're posting steadily AND engaging people in conversation.
· Be really generous. I believe that people prefer to follow generous people.
· Go read one hundred blog posts about how to grow your Twitter following. By the time you're finished, you'll be the expert.

Come back and teach all of us "experts" something, okay?

Austin