If you’re using Twitter to promote yourself / your band / your novel / your conference etc it’s obvious that you would like to have a large amount of followers. There’s one single thing, more than any other, that puts us off following people on our various twitter accounts, and it’s a simple thing that can be fixed.

First of all, try to think how many people will come across your twitter profile. Theire are a couple of very common ways, and they all work on the same principle – a list.

1) You’ve started following me. Twitter is a great place for information sharing and conversations, so it makes sense in most cases for you to check out the profiles of those following you. If you like what you see, you’ll follow back.

2) I’m following, for example, @three_monkeys who writes about a very particular topic close to my heart. I think therefore that the people @three_monkeys is following are probably worth following, so I click on his ‘following list’

3) My profile is based on a specific area, one well represented by a profile like @bbcbreaking, so I browse to their ‘followers’ list looking for like-minded souls

In all three of these cases, I will browse a list which presents profile pictures and names together. Crucially, when I hover over a profile name I ‘ll get the bio info of that profile. And here’s the tip, then: Make sure you have a bio field filled out for your profile. If you don’t, you’re making it more difficult for people to quickly see what you’re about – and if it ain’t quick and easy, why should they bother with you??

twitter tip - add bio field