I got tired of remembering all the different things one must do to build followers on twitter, tweet interesting stuff that spreads with RTs to build your twitter account into a solid distribution channel for correctly marketing your startup’s updates. More importantly, I like to share everything I know with the startups that we incubate at BetterLabs and realized that I just needed 1 place to point them to. I realized that there were a lot of how-to posts but a lot of them were repetitive and new spins on the same suggestions, so I decided to build a good reference list for myself, our startups as well as for everyone who may be interested. You will see a list of all suggestions from a range of blogs that I have come across that I have aggregated. Please note that I have referenced the blog posts with the via link as the source of the suggestion. I will continue to add new things along the way so check back every once in a while for an update. If you have more suggestions, please post a comment and I will add it if I think its truly a good tip. And of course, you can follow me on twitter @betterlabs and RT this post I hope this is helpful. 

1. Invest some forethought into your Twitter username (15 characters or less); short, memorable, relevant, personable, and easy to spell are good guidelines. You will also be able to associate a 20 character (max) REAL NAME with your username. If you are a local business or if you use an 800# free recorded message service, it may be possible to incorporate that phone number in the real name. You could also categorize what you do as part of your real name. This is a very visible part of the Twitter system, chose wisely. Imagine if you did a lot of local Twittering (Twitter does allow you to target geographical areas) and your real name was: Joe (Great Plumber) – no, not “Joe THE Plumber.” That would stick in the often underused “Tweet-lobe” within the brain of many people as they saw your name in the Twitter timeline daily. One day, someone’s hot water heater starts leaking and guess who they are looking for? via
   
2. Twitter Basics: Here is the key terms and you can find the full glossary here: via
   1. D twittername – direct message (not public, goes right to the Tweeter in question) 
   2. @twittername – public reply
   3. Follow twittername – start following someone
   4. Leave twittername – stop following someone
   5. on – turns your notifications on (on your phone or however you are receiving tweets)
   6. off – turns notifications off
   7. help – accesses the other commands as you may need them
   8. hashtags or # – put a hashtag in front of a ‘tag’ for easier tracking (i.e. This speaker is really nailing it. I think her slides are brilliant! #web2expo). This is really useful for conferences, events and specific topics of interest. You can read a little more about the history here You can track hashtags at Twemes.
3. Follow the “smores (social media whores*).” They are the folks with large number of followers and seem to be the opinion leaders (and perhaps even “heros”) of Twitter. You can get a good idea of who they are by viewing Twitterati.alltop, TwitterCounter, and Egos.alltop. There are three reasons to follow them: first, many have scripts that will auto follow you; second, you might learn something from watching what they tweet about; third, when people look at your profile to see who you follow, you want to appear that you have a clue. via
4. Send @ messages to the smores. They probably won’t answer you, but that’s okay. All you want to do is appear like you have a relationship with them to enhance your credibility. The theory is, “If she is tweeting with @scobleizeer, she must be worth following.” Bull shiitake logic, admittedly, but it helps. To bastardize what a famous PR person once told me, “It’s not who you know. It’s who appears to know you.” via
5. Use a Profile Picture that Reinforces Your Brand (You!): Keeping your profile pictures consistent across all your social networks will help people find you and recognize you online as well as offline. A picture of you with a hat obstructing your face or you in your Halloween costume should probably be swapped out for a picture that looks like you almost all of the time. A hard-to-recognize picture may result in users squinting at it and clicking away instead of clicking “Follow.” Of course, using a photo of your face may not be the only way to be “recognizable”: @photomatt Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, has a profile picture which is simple a bright pink square. It’s certainly recognizable in a Twitter lineup, but unless you’re on magazine covers like he is, you’ll want to use your picture as a way for people to identify you and to create a visual and hopefully emotional connection with your Tweets even if they haven’t met you in-person. If your company has a memorable logo (and you have the permission to display it) you may consider using it to increase brand recognition. Note that this is best when the content of your Tweets is close to your company’s mission/communication strategy. via
6. Utilize your Profile “Bio” to your Best Advantage. Be clever, be witty, or just be yourself! In a few words, sum up who you are and make it sound interesting. Since that’s what Twitter is all about, writing an intriguing Bio in such a small space shouldn’t be hard. Here’s also another opportunity point your audience somewhere. If you are going to point users to a site that is not your website or Twitter landing page, I recommend putting it here so that users see the entire URL instead of in your Web link which gets cut off. Transparency is always best. @jowyang uses his Bio to give a brief explanation of who he is and points those interested to an article he wrote “How I use Twitter.” via
7. Create a Custom Profile Page Background: Since the visual impact of your Twitter background is the strongest tool you have available, customize it to give people an eyeful of who you are.You can make your own image on your computer and upload it under Settings – Design – Change Background Image. The first 200-250 pixels width on the left hand side is a great place to put additional profile information and list websites. For a quick solution, you can create just the sidebar (250×700) as your background image with “no tile” selected. Then, modify the rest of the Twitter color scheme to complement it. You can use the first 200 pixels from the top for your picture or “header” for a possible logo and tagline. The rest of the 400-500 vertical pixels should be used to tell others what you’re about and most importantly, what you’re looking for. Are you using Twitter to get business? To gather ideas for a project? To get feedback from customers? This is the best place to reflect your interests and other facets of your professional life if necessary, so that others can see it immediately. Alternatively, you can use it to tell people how best to contact you like @garyvee who encourages people to email him instead of sending a Direct Message on Twitter. via
8. Be Interesting: It’s fine to announce what you’re doing and thinking and what you had for lunch, as long as you do it in a way that is entertaining to your followers. Twitter is micro-blogging, and like on your blog, if all you do is give a play-by-play of your mundane daily happenings, you will lose followers. The people I enjoy following find a way to make me smile with their quips and one-liners, even if they are just informing me what they had for breakfast. Here are a couple of examples from the past few days. via
9. Be Informative: Not every tweet should answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” If you are going to participate in the Twitter community, you need to give something back. I love it when people post links to helpful articles or leave bits of advice and information. Post whatever comes naturally to you. @skinnyjeans reminds her followers every day to get up and drink a glass of water and gives us a much-needed pep talk in the middle of the afternoon. I love this! via
10. Be Interactive: Don’t be a “hit and run” tweeter! In other words, don’t just log into Twitter to tell people what you are doing or link to your post and then leave. Respond to tweets, ask questions, answer questions. Twitter is a conversation, not a monologue, and the more you participate, the more you will get out of it, and the faster your community will grow.  via
11. Have Favorites: When you are new to Twitterville, you may not even notice that little star icon to the right of each tweet. You can use it to make that post a “favorite.” I always look at what a new follower favors. It tells me a bit about what makes them tick. It shows your sense of humor and your passion points. via
12. Monitor your Reply Ratio: If you reply too much you run the risk of just blending in to the noise of the Twittersphere. Your tweets can become less useful to your wider community of followers and can end up being confusing. Remember that most of your followers can only see half of the conversations that you’re having. If you don’t reply enough you could be missing one of the real benefits of Twitter – that of the interaction and conversation that is possible. You can also end up coming across as unapproachable and allusive. via
13. Follow everyone who follows you. When I first started on Twitter, Robert Scoble told me to follow everyone who followed me. “But why, Robert, would I follow everyone like that?” The answer is that it’s courteous to do so and because when you do, some people will respond to you and eveyone who follows them will see this—which is more exposure for you. Having said this, when you get to more than fifty or so followers, it’s impossible to read what all your followers tweet. At that point, you have to focus on direct private messages (“Ds”) and direct public messages (“@s””). via
14. Be Promotional: Yes, it’s okay to promote your own work, as long as it’s not all self-promotion, all the time. I love it when people link to their recent posts on Twitter. I almost always follow the links, especially when it’s done in a thoughtful way. I can’t always log in to my feed reader and catch up on my favorite bloggers, but for some reason, if they post a link in Twitter, I usually take the time to follow it, especially when they introduce the link in a thoughtful and interesting way. Which brings me to my next point. via
15. Be Personal: For a while I used a plugin that automatically tweets a link to every new post I write, but I have turned off that feature and opted, instead, to write a more thoughtful introduction to the link I’m sharing. Maybe ask a question, or make a comment or introduce the link in a way that pertains to the subject of the post. No one likes to feel that they are getting spammed. And they are more likely to read it if you make it sound like it will be interesting or helpful. Don’t, however, be tempted to use the old bait and switch tactic to get readers to follow your link. They will wise up and you will find yourself unfollowed. And while we’re at it, TURN THE ROBOTS OFF. It’s impersonal and insulting. I unfollow and block people who use automated responses. Period. The end. via
16. Run competitions to gain followers. Run competitions and giveaway attractive prizes to all or lucky winners who follow you. Think through what kind of followers you want before defining such a competition. See the SitePoint example which is a good case study. 
17. Repeat your tweets. Try this experiment: take your most interesting tweets (as measured by how many people retweet them, perhaps) and post them again three times, eight to twelve hours apart. I used to think that people would complain about repeating tweets, but I’ve never had a complaint. My theory is that the volume of tweets is so high and most people check in at about the same time every day, so people don’t notice repeat tweets. via
18. Post before you follow strangers: Take a few days and post a few thoughts on subjects yo want to discuss on Twitter. It can be work, play, news, sports, music whatever. But then when people check you out they know what you are about and can decide to follow you because they share something in common with you via
19. Avoid spammer stats: The worst thing you can do is have stats that show you follow 149 people and 4 people follow you. You may be the nicest person in the world, but you have spammer stats. It’s because you chose to follow a bunch of people but revealed so little of yourself, that no one wanted to follow you back. This is fixed by going slower, by posting tweets that let others know about you. via
20. Ask for help. From time to time, ask followers what they think about a given campaign or product. Consider their advice. Tell them if you incorporate it. This lends the sense your company values them — not merely as users but as friends with sound opinions. via
21. Stuff to Tweet About: There are no rules about what you should tweet out, here are a few suggestions for you. It is important that you balance the ‘outbound’ with the ‘inbound’. In otherwords, the announcements with the conversations: via
    1. Personal thoughts and reflections that suit your brand – this helps people feel more trust towards you and your brand and strikes up conversations
    2. Events (both your own and other events your audience may find interesting) – this makes things interesting and, perhaps, gives you a way to meet your followers
    3. Contests (”The first three people who answer this trivia question get….”) – they drive more followers and interest in what you tweet
    4. Replies (@twittername) – this comes from listening to your followers (you have to follow back to see their tweets). The more personal the reply, the higher the impact.
    5. Direct replies (d twittername) – this isn’t in the public timeline, but it helps build deeper bonds to talk directly to someone like this. This is helpful to answer people when it is a private matter or when you want to show concern (i.e. someone reports an accident, etc.)
    6. New blog posts – you should keep these to one per day at the very most and you should also promote other people’s blog posts that are of interest
    7. Announcements – if it is interesting, tweet it
    8. OH’s (overheard) – someone say something in the office or when you are out and about that cracks you up? Type OH: “well, if you don’t mind, im trying to work on my love life” or something else funny (sometimes used to offset potentially racy comments…if you didn’t say it, but are just REPEATING IT, then it’s okay)
    9. Rickrolls or other fun internet games – this shows you are a bunch of fun and has people trying to do the same for you. Spreading as many internet memes as possible is good.
    10. Lyrics and quotes – especially fun are the lyrics: ♪Never give the game away | Try to keep me entertained, baby | Don’t make it too easy | Leave something for me and my imagination♪ as the musical notes make for lots of questions
    11. Links to media you create – video is fun, podcasts, perhaps interviews that are posted online about you, etc.
    12. Shout outs – @twittername rocks! Thanks for the great link: http://insertlink.com These make people feel great, too.
22. Twitter Tools: Here is a list of a lot of tools that you may find useful. I am not sure how many tools one can use at once but this is a good list to choose the ones you like. 
    1. TweetBacks: Twitter background templates that you can customize
    2. Twollow: Auto follow users on twitter based on keywords in their tweets
    3. Twhirl: AIR client for easy tweeting
    4. Twellow: Search twitter users based on keywords and topic areas

As we work with super early stage startup founders, one of the things that comes up repeatedly is how can we launch the site with a killer UI/UX. It is obvious that you’d want a UX of killer product like Facebook for your site / product but I always push back and explain that UX is something that always evolves and gets better and better with data, user feedback and just availability of more time and is inherently an iterative process, just as is the core product development process. You may think you have the right product and UX, but look at it in 6 months and 9 months and 12 months and you will know you didn’t. And the most important resource that you leverage is the Wayback Machine to not only prove this point but also to learn the evolution of Product/model/UI/UX of the most popular products to gather insights and apply them to the product you are building. Its an invaluable resource and I would encourage everyone to give it a try and see what you can learn and apply to your startup product. You get access to only a few pages (mostly the homepage) but it still gives you a lot to learn from. Here are some ideas:

• If you are launching a reviews site or community, won’t it be interesting to track how Yelp.com evolved to become such a stellar success?
• If you are doing a social site for colleges, then there is a lot you can learn from early screenshots of Facebook and its messaging on the homepage?
• Look up the launch page of any successful startup and see what their homepage looked like at launch and then a few months in their first year to see what you can learn and apply to your business.

These are just a couple of pointers and every startup founder can find information most relevant to their business and defintiely not make the same mistakes and leverage things that have worked. Here is a screenshot of the Yelp.com homepage when it was launched

And here is the homepage of Yelp.com a few months later and you can see the additional of the “what is yelp” section at the top.

And here’s the hompage in latter part of 2005 and you can see the dramatic change of the site and product and business model!

And ofcourse, here’s the Facebook homepage in its early days!

There is a wealth of information and insight that can be derived from Wayback Machine and you may want to consider it an important tool in your product development process. Once you know what you are building, try to find related sites and learn from their history! History teaches us a lot of lessons – in startup product development as well