setting up a twitter account and getting followers is like trying to move up the ranks in online video games. for those who play online games for fun and are not, well, too good, you’ll understand my point shortly.

there have been several articles written about getting twitter and followers (Dosh Dosh, followers being friends), but my favorite was an article on mashable.  this articles gave examples of people who load up on following people in order to get followed. a lot of these are crap marketing accounts, but sometimes normal users do this as well.

in fact, I’ve seen this portrayed as a follower / following ratio (which I’ve now coined the twollower ratio), where anything below .2 is pretty bad!

when i started playing online games on the xbox 360, my rank was 1 (this is when it first came out and the best online game was Ghost Recon). and so you know, rank 1 sucks despite how good that sounds! top rank is 25.

well, as a rank 1, when you join rooms, people just immediately kick you out. they think, “he must suck, he’s only a 1″. and given the maturity of gamers, they tell you how much you suck before kicking u out.

so if you don’t start playing online games the day it comes out when everyone is a 1, then you get stuck into playing with only beginners (where if you are good, you’re rank will go up) or continually getting kicked out of rooms with those higher ranked players, like 4s, 5s, or if you’re lucky, a 13!!!

on twitter, its very similar. if you join and you start following people, when they get that email that says you’re now following them and click on your link, it shows that you may now be following 12 people and have one follower. they think, man, this isn’t worth it for me, and they don’t follow (unless of course you have a very enticing twitter page, web link and description, as mentioned in the mashable article).

so you end up with that wonderful twollower ratio of .1 and you never get any followers! so how do you get out of this vicious circle? there are a few things you can do:

1. Join with friends – if you play online games with friends, then you know that your rank can go up without getting booted out of rooms. plus you all get better together. with twitter, you can get a dialogue going with friends, and people may follow you based on what you’re saying
2. Write to people you’re following – with video games, the more friends you make online and talk to on team games, the more you’re invited to games. it’s that simple. if you’re commenting on what others have to say and they’re reasonable comments, people may want to chat with you in the future and follow you.
3. Just start tweeting – when you tweet with the famous # sign (e.g. #24, #nfl, #videogames), you get into searchable groups via keywords. this may help picking up followers if you have a consistent theme that you discuss. this is similar to just getting into rank 1 games online and kicking ass! your rank is bound to go up!
   

I hope you an see the similarities based on this post. Since i ended up getting to rank 7 on Ghost Recon, this shows there’s always hope for getting a following on twitter!