The actual way Twitter works is that you follow people, and they follow you back, or vice versa. Unfortunately generally there are usually some strict limits applied. You can follow up to 2,000 individuals but after that we are reduced to following only 1.1 times the amount of people which are following you. So if we have 10,000 followers, you may track up to 11,000 people and no more. Right now there is also a daily cap of 500 which usually of courseprevents people building up large spam accounts
The next issue is that a lot of people who you shadow will not follow you back, so it is essential to periodically unfollow everyone who has not followed you back, then you can start adding followers again.
And so, to increase your following you will need to follow loads of individuals (up to 500 each day), then you will need to unfollow each of those that fail to reciprocate (I would typically wait 7 days before unfollowing).
Using these simple principles your following will slowly, but surely, improve. This takes time and patience however, as you grow more followers the pace of increase will speed up.
Twitter is a tremendous way to produce traffic and reputation for your site or organization, and due to it’s high authority on Google it also gives a particularly effective backlink from your Twitter bio back to your site. This alone is an important factor for tweeting. Also if you have not already, get signed up on Twellow.com
Hope the above helps and remember that you really need to be patient to increase your twitter following. If you follow the above principles then over time you will be able to develop a large following. There’s lots of e-books and information out there, and different tools, but the above is pretty much all I have utilized to get my 85,000 plus followers (as of January 2011).
Mark Boardman BSc dip.hyp is a leading SEO specialist offering Expert SEO services. For more information Follow Me On Twitter.