How do you get more Twitter followers?

If you are famous you can get thousands of Twitter followers in merely a few days. Well, this is a by-product of being famous. You don’t really have to make an extra effort. Simply start Twittering, let the media know, mention it on your website and lo! people will be running over each other to follow you, and if they are lucky, to be followed by you. Examples of famous people can be famous movie and rock stars, authors, politicians, players, and even bloggers. Don’t think it’s been a free lunch for them; becoming famous takes lots of effort, focus and talent.

Being an unknown, getting more Twitter followers can be a slow, tedious process, but in the end of the day, it can be more rewarding. Since you have to use your conversation and communication skills, you get followers only if you are interesting and people like you. Here are a few things you can do to get more Twitter followers:

• Follow people. You cannot get followers by simply having a Twitter account. When you follow them they normally follow you back, and even if they don’t, you get to listen to some interesting conversations.
• Follow people carefully. Don’t follow everybody you come across in a desperate attempt to be followed back. Remember it’s all about relevant conversation and when it comes to social media there are rarely shortcuts. Follow people when you really think they should be followed.
• Have an interesting profile page. It helps if you are already running a marginally successful blog but even if you aren’t, try to tell the prospective follower why you should be followed. Include a small bio of what you do and what are your interests and what makes you special. 90% of your followers follow you after checking out your profile page.
• Strike up conversations. Lurkers rarely get followers. You need to appear in front of new people and this happens when you reply to people’s queries, questions and by reacting to their tweets. When you do that, and when they respond, your Twitter id appears in their stream and this is how new people know about you.
• Post useful information. All the time you are coming across useful tid-bits on the Internet. Post the links on Twitter and if possible, with your own comments. This gives people an insight into what ideologies you follow and what interests you.
• Retweet. When people post interesting thoughts and links and if you feel like sharing them with your own followers, retweet. They’re notified when you retweet and they often respond either with a thank you (and hence, your ID appears in their stream) or they remember to retweet your messages.
• Promote your Twitter ID. Twitter is not the only place you can promote your Twitter ID. You can put it on your blog or website. Some people even publish their Twitter profile links on their visiting cards.

While trying to gain followers, just make sure you don’t get swept away by the numbers. Your followers should be your listeners, and you should be able to hold conversations with them.

Customizing a WordPress blog can range from designing your own theme to adding new publishing features, displaying featured blog posts, manipulating sidbar widgets and components, designing and displaying unique navigation, creating member-only pages and creating custom login features.

Since WordPress is entirely written in PHP you can incorporate even advanced features if you know a little bit of the web programming language. In most of the cases you don’t even need plugins. Simply add some lines at the appropriate places and you’ve got yourself a new custom feature for your WordPress blog. This blog post mentions many such code examples.

But why optimize your images? Two reasons. Some of your visitors may have slower internet connections so they’ll appreciate if they don’t have to wait forever before they can make out what’s the image all about. And lighter images save you lots of bandwidth cost. It hardly makes a difference if your image is viewed by 500-600 odd visitors per day. But what if your web page contains 5-10 images and that page is visited by thousands of visitors daily? You can do the math and figure out how much you are going to pay to your web host just to display the images.

This Smashingmagazine blog post tells you how to optimize your JPG images.

Whether you want to learn French, German, Chinese, Swahili, English or a plethora of other languages, you can learn and practice them on the websites mentioned on this Mashable link.

By just creating a color contrast, just look how the second design is made to stand out. Simply, by creating a few shadow effects, making a textured background and rendering shades to your header, you make a world of a difference to your final website design. This blog post explains in detail how you can improve your website design in small, 5-minute upgrades.

This Mashable blog post reviews a service called Lifestream Backup that not only lets you backup your Twitter messages, but also your stuff existing on Flickr, GoogleDocs and other services existing in the clouds.

In order to achieve more by working less you must first of all remove every possible distraction whether it is mental or physical. Get rid of turn off everything that distracts you. It’s not about those five minutes of distraction; it takes longer to get your concentration that and focus on the work you are currently doing.  Besides, when an obstruction is caused it kills your creativity, and tragically, sometimes you never get it back. So even if not for the sake of saving time and achieving more in less time, you should eliminate distractions simply to perform better and make optimal use of your creativity.

Decide that for the next four hours you’re not going to check your e-mail, you are not going to use your Instant Messenger, you are not going to be unavailable on phone and you’re not going to let people inside your room. No matter how educational and revealing that link seems you’re not going to check it out unless you have completed your work.  That blog post you desperately want to read can wait for a few more hours.

You can also decide to outsource the work that can be done without your direct involvement will stop

Read more about how to achieve more by working as in this blog post.

When you’re working as a freelancer you are manipulating multiple aspects of your business single-handedly so it is a multifaceted job profile.  For instance, if you are a content writer you are not just writing content for your clients you are also managing your entire business — you take care that your website functions properly, you constantly try to improve your search engine rankings, you are perpetually trying to keep in touch with your past, present and prospective clients, you are always trying to build your brand and these days strengthening your social network.  You also have to take care of your blog.  Aside from that you have to be very careful about how you communicate with your clients and take care they remain your clients for as long as possible.

It is like juggling many balls at the same time. You definitely need to keep yourself updated and well-informed and for that you constantly need to read, learn, improve and interact. This Freelance Switch blog post reviews 40 places where you can known more about your business as a freelancer.