Quickly building up your Twitter followers isn’t rocket science, you simply need a sound strategy backed by hard work and commitment.

We can’t all have as many Twitter followers as Kim Kardashian, but you don’t have to be a reality TV star to build an impressive following.

Here are four rules to follow to get you on the path to Twitter stardom:

1. Twitter is self-fulfilling

The more you interact with others, the more they’ll interact with you. But first you need to carefully define your community and follow relevant people – and the following tools can help:

• Twiends – delivers a listing of twitter users to connect with
• Ignitwit – add topics of interest to produce a list of people to follow
• Followerwonk – identifies more potential followers and analyses what content is most effective at attracting them

You can also upload your existing contacts, using your email address book, plus add a Twitter account to your LinkedIn and follow all of your contacts on that channel.

Then it’s time to start interacting. Retweet the posts of those you’re following, send messages and ask them questions. Most will be grateful for the interaction and follow you back. And don’t forget to thank them for doing so.

2. Content is king

To be truly successful at building up a Twitter following, you need to be creating original content that your community will want to read or watch. Become a news feed for your industry by tweeting links to top stories, plus post up links to your blogs, case studies, company news and other relevant content. Tweets with links are retweeted far more than those without them, while pictures/graphics/videos increase the chance of a post being shared by 18%.

Make your tweets easier to find and double their engagement potential by labelling them with hashtags relevant to your community. RiteTag is a great tool for identifying the most powerful hashtags for your posts.

Offering a discount on a product or service has also proved to be effective with 94% of Twitter users following brands that do this.

3. Distribution is Queen, Timing and frequency are key

Work out the best time to post your tweets to maximise engagement. Generally, weekend posts generate 17% more engagement and Twitter’s peak viewing time is between 1pm and 3pm. However, your community could have their own specific habits, so experiment and adjust your tweeting to their expectations.

Avoid going tweet crazy, sticking to two to three posts a day – you don’t want people may get sick of the sight of you.

3. Presentation matters

Make sure you have a relevant, appealing, good quality cover image, a clear and concise biography, and that the style and tone of your content reflects your brand, as this will help to attract the right followers.

Your profile picture is important, too, as personalities perform better on Twitter. Even if you’re representing your brand, consider using a good profile picture of yourself rather than your logo.

4. External influence counts

Show your expertise and share your knowledge and advice through blogs and add social sharing links to them. If they get widely distributed, you can build a big community from one great piece of content.

Add your Twitter account to key touch points with your community, such as business cards, complement slips, signs, shop windows, email sign off, newsletters, etc, along with Facebook and Instagram where relevant, and display your live Twitter stream on your website.

The great thing is that today you can do a lot of this from your smartphone during your commute or free time. Working hard on your social streams will pay dividends in terms of generating a significant number of relevant followers.

In today’s digitally centric world, the prominence of quickly accessible information has drastically changed how human beings behave on a day to day basis.

Phases like “I Google’d it” have become common place, it has changed how we use our brains. We are not longer capable of retaining information like past generations, for every passing year we become inherently more dependant on the encyclopaedia of knowledge online.

The direct effect is that we now turn to the internet, when ever we look for insight into peoples lives, services and products.

Google’s dominance in the search market has also had a drastic effect on how we filter the wealth of information online. Earlier this year they told the world that they are focused on delivering a more comprehensive internet home page especially for you.

If you search for a country, i.e. France, you will now be presented, with hotels, restaurants, travel options and activities that match you past search history.

What this means for individuals and businesses alike, is that we must focus on what information is presented on the results when someone searches for us.

We need to be able to curate the information that is being presented to potential, customers, clients and employers.

It is important to manage any negative feedback that may crop up. The best, easiest and often most effective manner to achieve this is quite simple – Ignore the bad and praise the good.

People make mistakes, they can be small and unimportant or they can be major and have huge effects. But it is vital that we accept that we are not infallible. Fighting to excuse a mistake, explain it or make it go away only gives it more air time.

“Piggate” was a horrendous story, a mistake that would seem somewhat unforgivable. There was little to no comment on this from the Government, and the story fizzled out quickly. Not much is said on this now, as there is so much more news from the Government to report on.

Although you may not have such an affinity for agricultural animals. The best way to improve your appearance in search results is to push as much positive content out into the world. Simply push the negative content off the 1st page, then the second and so on. No one cares what results are on page 300.

What’s the best approach to this? Well, we here at CHC Digital like to look at SEO as a three piece puzzle; embedded data, content and reach.

1. Embedded data, this is really all about getting the basics right. With many developers focused on creating websites that follow the latest trends in design and functionality. It is easy to forget things like meta tags, page titles, page descriptions, structured links etc.

They are still the forefront of in-page SEO, and are the search engine’s “bread and butter” for information on your company. Its worth getting this sorted, right from the get go.

Do some research on competitive keywords, make sure you are really targeting your niche. Targeting “Nice Guy” is not going to serve you well, get a little more focused “Nice Guy london brown hair green eyes six foot one” the more specific the better.

2. Content, most search engines are looking to present “us” with reliable information from the most credible source. Again be specific with your content, write blogs, frequently. Give your opinion, try and integrate some of your keywords. Essentially you need to show these search engines that you are the master of one very specific service or product. They are looking for know-how and insight into what ever you do. Ultimately they are all about building that encyclopaedia of knowledge that we all use on a day to day basis.

3. Reach, the most recent major addition to SEO. Search engines have a tough job, there is a lot of similar content all over the web. A lot is plagiarised from other sources, so how do they determine who the real opinion leader is? Who is the master of their trade? Who’s information will they recommend as the answer to a question? They look to the online community for insight. If your blog has a referral link from the BBC, the search engines are going to see that as legitimate information. Again Google late 2015 told us that they now also rely on the information from the social networks. This allows us a unique opportunity to leverage our communities to benefit our search results. If you write a great blog, post it on twitter and it gets retweeted 100 times search engines now consider that a more reliable source than on that was only retweeted 50 times.

In a nutshell, analyse your website, fix any of the basic issues. Submit your changes to Google etc through the webmaster tools. Build a big community on the social streams, as quickly as you can. Write informed, inspiring and influential content on positive topics about you or your business. Share this content with your social communities, ensure that there is a good back link to your newly optimised site. Given some time and successful sharing, you will see how you can control your own results. This ultimately leads to you controlling your own online reputation.