How to grow your Twitter

My blogging buddy Bonnie posted this about our latest round table blogging discussions.  I was reading through the comments and saw Caitlin had asked for some ideas for growing her twitter.  I started giving her some ideas and realized that I know a lot about growing twitter.  If you wonder why I don't have more followers, I wonder that too.  Haha, but really it's because I don't do all of these things as much as I could.  Also, I don't care that much.  But I have more twitter followers than blog followers so I'm obviously better at one than the other. . .

1. Bonnie mentioned using a giveaway to get more followers on twitter, and you certainly can do that, but I get very little interaction from the followers I've gotten from giveaways.  But numbers help and it's always nice for them to be boosted.  And just because they aren't tweeting with me, doesn't mean they aren't reading my posts. (they probably aren't)

2. If you're new to tweeting, it might feel really awkward to start talking to no followers, but you just gotta.  You have to start somewhere.

3. When I first started tweeting I was using it in conjunction with my interior design blog so I would live tweet #DesignStar and that's where I got some of my first followers.  Tweet live events and use the hashtag.  If people like what you say they might check you out (why it's good to start tweeting even if you have no followers) and start following you.  You can use other hashtags too.  Follow Jimmy Fallon and some of his hashtag games are really funny and will get you more exposure.

4. Interact with those you follow.  Tweet meaningful things back to them.  Sometimes people will follow me back right away, other times we have to have more interaction before they start following me back.  And I once got tweeted by one of my favorite bands, Good Old War, so that was awesome.

5. Follow more people.  It's just the law of averages  (I'm not really sure if I'm using that term correctly).  The more people you follow and interact with the more you'll have following you back.

If all else fails, just tweet about breastfeeding.  Once I tweeted this:

and got like ten new followers.

What are some ways you have gotten more followers on twitter?