By most people’s standards, I’m doing very well on Twitter. TwitterGrader currently gives me a score of 100% and has me ranked #265 out of nearly 2 million users it has analyzed.

I’m adding an average of a little over 30 followers per day, and have had days where I’ve added almost 100 new followers (#FollowFriday has been very good to me lately – thanks to all have included me in their lists).

I could toss up a bunch of other metrics here to convince you, but let’s just suffice it to say that, more or less, I’m “doing everything right” (I’m sure a few people will argue one or two points with me, but whatever).

But I want more followers. LOTS more followers. And so do you…and here’s why:

1. Only a handful of your followers are actually paying attention.

Some of your followers are heavy Twitter users. Guess what? They’re following a ton of people, and the odds of them actually picking any one of your tweets out of the noise of the thousands of people they’re following is very slim. Others are light Twitter users, and the odds of them actually being online and seeing your tweets in a timely manner is fairly slim also.

Even with nearly 4,500 “true” followers, I typically find that any one given tweet of mine generates less than 10 reactions – a reply, a retweet, a click-through to my blog, etc.  [Point of clarification: I’m talking about first-order reactions, i.e., from my immediate followers. The network effect is typically much higher – anywhere from 20 to as many as 300-400 actions in the extended network after the retweets.]

That’s 0.2%!

That is a worse response rate than Google AdWords. It’s a worse response rate than cold calling. Heck, it’s a worse response rate than junk mail!!!

I’m not saying that means it’s ineffective for the time/effort you put into it, because it’s a) free and b) not terribly time-consuming. Still, point is, the response rate sucks. You need larger numbers if you want significant action in response to your Twitter activity.

2. More followers = more visibility = more “true” followers.

I couldn’t care less about my follower count for its own sake. It’s not a “badge of honor”. But there’s a basic truth about social media that Clay Shirky wrote about way back in 2003 in Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality: the sources who get more attention tend to get way more attention.

There are several reasons for this:

For one thing, psychologically, those with more followers are perceived by many to be more authoritative.

For another, there are dozens of tools out there that rank sources based on follower count (or at least that’s one of the metrics). So tools like TwitterGrader, TwitterCounter’s Top 100 lists, Twitterholic and others give more visibility to those with more followers. More visibility = still more followers.

And finally, if you have more followers, there are more people re-tweeting your posts, replying to you, etc. So their networks are exposed to you and more likely to add you.

Does it actually work? Anecdotally, yes it does. I had something I had posted about several times, even asking people for re-tweets. I got several – almost 20, in fact, but it took like 5 posts to get those 20 re-tweets. I then asked my friend @PerryBelcher to re-tweet it for me. At the time, Perry had a little over 10x as many followers as I did. Perry got 10 re-tweets off his one post. Now that’s obviously not proportional, i.e., he doesn’t have as much average attention per user as I do, but that just proves my point as to why you need larger numbers.

3. Even if you’re currently B2B or in a narrow niche, you don’t know what the future holds.

For the past six years, I’ve worked social media almost entirely from a B2B perspective myself. Some of my clients have been B2C, and I’ve advised them on strategies that I never implemented myself because I didn’t see them as a fit. My latest project, however, is a B2C play to a very broad potential market. Simply put, I can serve that project much better the farther my reach/influence is. Certainly, stronger relationships create all kinds of opportunities, but I also just simply need to raise awareness.

And relative to my goals, I’m practically starting from scratch. I want to have 10-15 times my current follower count on my personal account, and I’m starting from square one on the account I set up for that project, @AmerGuitarAcad.

Regardless of what your current job or business is, what does the future hold for you? And when suddenly you do find yourself in a position of needing a much larger network, do you want to be starting from scratch? Or already have a head start?

As Harvey Mackay says, “Dig your well before you’re thirsty.”

4. The celebrities are coming! The celebrities are coming!

Take a look at the Twitterholic Top 100. Everyone on there is a celebrity. Even if you don’t recognize their name, trust me, they are. They’re either a blogging celebrity, an author, a TV personality, a technology CEO or something. These people already have huge other platforms from which to announce their Twitter presence and rapidly grow their follower count. For example, my uncle, David Allen (@GTDGuy), has been on Twitter barely six weeks and already has about 175,000 followers.

The more celebrities show up on Twitter, the harder and harder it will get for you to reap the benefits described in #2 above. Three months ago, the Twitterholic list looked completely different. I mean, consider this: @GuyKawasaki and @Scobleizer don’t even make the cut any more.

The window of opportunity is narrowing rapidly. If you want to be on the high side of that power curve, you need to get there NOW!

5. It doesn’t cost anything to have followers.

The incremental cost of adding one more follower is $0.00. Not only that, there’s zero (or near-zero) time cost. You can rapidly grow your follower count in just 15-20 minutes a day. Now sure, you may have to follow more people to grow your follower count rapidly, and they may create more noise in your Twitter stream, but there are tools like TweetDeck that will help you manage that (just create a “high attention” group of people whose tweets you absolutely don’t want to miss).

There’s simply no downside, that I can see. By all means, if you think there is, say so in the comments below.

So how do I get LOTS of followers?

I wish I already knew. If I did, I’d already have them.

But I know who does!

Richard Bryda, aka @BigRichB.

Let me tell you a little about Rich…

Rich has over 75,000 followers. That makes him unequivocally the most-followed non-celebrity on Twitter. And he built that following all since last November, entirely on Twitter, i.e., no blog, no YouTube videos, no TV/radio show, etc. He is the best person in the world at getting Twitter followers.

This weekend, Rich opened his kimono, with the launch of Brute Force Twitter, which spells out over a dozen tactics he has developed for rapidly growing your follower count.

I can tell you I personally won’t use every single one of these, but only one of them is a technique I’ve ever used myself, and even then, not to full effect. The rest of them, I never would have thought of.

I could spill the beans and tell you these techniques, but hey – that would be enormously disrespectful of the intellectual property Rich has spent countless hours developing over the past few months. And besides, if everybody had access to these techniques, you (and I) couldn’t use them to get on the steep side of that curve, right?

Rich knows that too, which is why he said:

I’m going to limit this offer to the first 300 people who order. Why?

Because I’ve decided that’s in my best interests. I have an idea that will make all of us in this tight group a lot of money. It involves forming an elite “Secret Society” on Twitter where we benefit each other.

Look, I want to dominate Twitter. So I’m going to use these 300 people to help me. And they’re going to use me, and each other, to help themselves also. Simple. That’s all I’m going to reveal about that idea here.

IMPORTANT: This is NOT a “how to get rich on Twitter” scheme!  This is about helping you get more followers to support your business model on Twitter, whatever it may be.

Rich is offering his system for just $97.

Worth every penny. If you don’t think you can immediately monetize a few thousand extra followers to get a return of $97, you’re really not thinking of Twitter as a business tool, in which case I don’t even know why you read this far.

But if you’re ready (or almost ready), you can get more information or order now.

Still not sure?

How about I show you how you can make back the cost of the program almost instantly?

See, Rich had the good sense to set up an affiliate program through PayDotCom, and he’s paying out 50% commissions! Yup, that’s right – just get two other people to buy the program and it pays for itself.

Personally, I found PayDotCom just a little confusing, so let me walk you through the steps:

1. Sign up at PayDotCom.
2. Set up your account details, confirm your email, etc. That part’s straightforward.
3. Click on Promote Products.
4. On the “Create A New Campaign” line, click on From Marketplace.
5. In the Keywords box, enter “brute force twitter”.
6. Under Brute Force Twitter, click on the Promote link at the bottom.
7. Under “Just the link”, copy that link and use it for promoting Brute Force Twitter.

And, of course, you can also use PayDotCom to promote your own info-products via affiliates, as well as to find info-products from others to promote to your friends, readers and followers.

By the way, one little note: you can’t earn commissions by buying the product through your own affiliate link, so don’t bother trying. I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d use my links in this post, but if you don’t want to, you can go directly to BruteForceTwitter.com. I don’t do affiliate stuff very often and hope you won’t begrudge me a few dollars for telling you about this great resource. But I’m more concerned that you have access to this valuable information.

STILL not sure?

Well, you can wait a few days and watch and see if my follower count explodes like I expect it to as I start applying these techniques. But remember, those 300 slots will go fast, considering Rich has 75,000 followers. Is it really worth waiting?

Order now

I’d love to hear your comments. Tell me I’m nuts, if you must, but if so, tell me why. Or if you decide to try this too, let me know – I’ll be interested to see how it works for you, as well.

This is one of the cooler recommendations I’ve ever received:

I’ve never thought of myself as edgy. Never actively tried to be edgy. Kind of cool that some people think I am. Sure beats being dull!

UPDATE 4/7/2009: Wow! I’m completely stunned. I feel played like an old violin by a master…and I mean that in the best possible way. Turns out this whole thing was an elaborate…hoax? Publicity stunt? Not sure quite what to call it. Anyway, turns out the folks at Buzzphoria have actually been planning this thing for more than a year. See The Buzzphoria End Game — We Are Our Own Best Case Study. I’ve left my original post below in its entirety. If you haven’t already, you really should read it first before jumping over to the link above. I’m looking forward to watching them unfold the whole story.

How NOT to Launch a Social Media Marketing Agency

In today’s HARO (Help a Reporter Out), the sponsor was Buzzphoria, a “social media marketing agency”. Here’s their ad, offering a “free social media reality check”:

I thought nothing of it at the time. Big deal – yet another social media marketing agency. But then my friend Jim Turner posted this on Twitter:

Of course, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to ask him who it was. He told me it was Buzzphoria. I didn’t immediately place the name, but then he reminded me that they were this morning’s HARO sponsor.

OK, look…I know about “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” and all that. And I’ve certainly been there myself – my social media profiles aren’t all always current and my blogs don’t all have the latest plugins and other cool stuff.

But when you put yourself out there in front of 50,000 media-savvy people (HARO subscribers), you gotta at least have the basics in order. Buzzphoria doesn’t.

Buzzphoria, this is your social media reality check!

Let’s start with their home page:

“Buzzphoria is a global Internet marketing Agency with dedicated staff covering 23 countries…” That’s a pretty bold claim. Let’s find out more about them, shall we? Who are they? What are their qualifications? Let’s check “About Us”:

FAIL!

Social media reality check: Social media is about people. Your case studies sound very impressive, but if I don’t know who you are, if I can’t check out your background, and if you don’t name your clients by name, for all I know, it’s bullshit. I’m not saying Buzzphoria is – I’m just saying I don’t have any way to find out.

OK, so they’re a social media agency. Let’s see what their blog has to say. Hmm… wait a minute, where is it? There’s no content from the blog (or any other social media) featured on the home page. There’s not even a link to their blog, podcast, Twitter or anything else. And no RSS feeds either.

FAIL!

Social media reality check: Your front page doesn’t have to be your blog, or even crammed full of social media content, but a fundamental social media strategy is for you to make it as easy as possible for people to connect with you via social media. At a minimum, your home page should have at least one or two links where people can connect with you, a little bit of featured social media content and an RSS feed where people can subscribe.

So let’s go find their blog. Turns out it’s buried under “Resources” and then linked from there. Let’s see what’s on their blog:

FAIL!

I’m speechless. Jim had said it, but I found it hard to believe. They took the time to integrate it into the look-and-feel of the site, but they couldn’t manage one post?

Social media reality check: Your web site doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be kept completely up-to-date all the time. But when you’re getting ready to launch a big publicity campaign, you’d better get it up-to-date. People are going to come check you out. What do you want them to find? Nothing? Worse than nothing…something that makes you look at least a little bit foolish?

So back to the resources page. Hmm… this looks interesting… a list of social networking web sites:

FAIL!

Umm… none of these are hyperlinked. None. What am I supposed to do, copy/paste them into my browser?

Social media reality check: A resource is only a resource if it’s actually useful. Hyperlinking rules. If you can take the time to make a list of resources, you can take the little bit of extra time to make them clickable. Otherwise it’s just meaningless words.

OK, so I did a little more digging around and found out that Buzzphoria is actually a rebranding of Shazaaam Marketing & PR Specialists. And guess what? They have a blog!

FAIL!

It was started in October of last year (1 post) and hasn’t been updated since December.

Social media reality check: A dead blog is worse than no blog. Seriously. Update it or get rid of it. Also, if you want “street cred” in the social media space, you need some history going back farther than six months.

So enough about the blog. Let’s see what Buzzphoria is doing on Twitter…

WHALE FAIL!

I was torn here. I was really tempted to grab it, but finally decided against it. If they’re really social media savvy, they’ll register it themselves before someone else does. I mean, can you imagine if someone grabbed @Buzzphoria and did something like link to this post? If it happens, it’s not me, but I’ll laugh.

Social media reality check: Grab the IDs for your brands in all the most popular social networking sites. Even if you have no intention of actively using a particular site, control your brand presence there. CheckUserNames.com makes it easy.

I still have hope. Maybe they’ve at least been generating some buzz for themselves on Twitter?

WHALE FAIL!

One mention…one!

Social media reality check: Participate before you publicize. A HARO ad shouldn’t be the first presence for your brand. Get engaged in the conversation and start building some buzz before you do your big official launch. Your friends and followers will then help support the launch by sharing it with their friends and followers. Why? Not because you have impressive anonymous case studies, but because they like and care about you and want to see you succeed.

So to all the folks at Buzzphoria – I’m sorry if this hits you hard. I’m not trying to be mean, and you all may be great at what you do for your clients. But right now, you’re certainly not looking the part. This is your social media reality check.

I’m totally hooked on Wordle: