Gaining followers on Twitter is a goal of most who use the microblogging service.

“How do I gain more followers on Twitter?” is, then, a question that some of us WSI consultants are asked often. Most of us use Twitter to have fun with friends and readers; we gain followers the real way, without resorting to dirty spamming tactics. 

Because of this, we’re offering our own guide to gaining Twitter followers—the way that doesn’t involve flashing a “Do you know who I am?” card. Here are five tips on how to win friends and influence Twitterers.

(Note: If you think Twitter is composed of inane, meaningless chatter, then it’s obviously not for you, and neither is this article.)

1) Fill out your bio

It doesn’t matter if you’re not someone “important”—think of a line or two that describes who you are and what you do and stick it in there. Quickly tell strangers who you are and why they might care about following you.

2) Be yourself

Twitter users appreciate it when you simply say the things you want to say, the way you want to say them. Don’t waste time trying to think of the funniest possible way to say something and don’t try to make yourself sound smarter or wittier than you are. The Twitter community is largely made up of people who just like conversing with others; they want to follow real people, not the shell of the person you might awkwardly be trying to fake.

3) Engage in @ replies, but don’t go overboard on @ replies

Twitter users love to feel like you’re noticing what they say and find it compelling enough to engage in a brief back and forth every so often. If you come off as a friendly individual who chit-chats once in a while with followers, more people will feel like you’re a welcoming person to follow. This is especially important as you gain more followers; even though it’s the Internet, people sometimes feel intimidated and lost in the crowd if they’re one of thousands of people following your tweets. Throw them a bone and reply back to them when they @ reply you, or pay attention to things people say and comment on them.

At the same time, don’t @ reply to every single person on the face of the earth. If too much of your Twitter stream is made up of @ replies, new people have little motivation to follow you. They’re not interested in reading your ongoing personal conversations with all 300 of your best friends; they want to follow you because of the interesting things you have to say about what you’re doing.

Think of it this way: when strangers go to your Twitter page and see an entire page of @ replies about obscure stuff that they couldn’t understand unless they followed all of those other people, why would they follow you?

4) If you have nothing to say, don’t

No one expects you to force yourself to tweet just for the sake of tweeting if nothing is popping into your head naturally. Your followers will thank you for not doing so.

5) Don’t be offended when followers leave

There are many reasons why someone might “unfollow” you, and not all of them are related to you @ replying too much or tweeting too much about irrelevant things. Sometimes, people realise that you don’t talk about the stuff they expected you to talk about, or they thought you were someone else, or they simply feel like they follow too many people and have to start making cuts.

There are no explicit rules for how to use Twitter, of course, and ultimately, people are going to use it however they see fit; that’s the beauty of such a flexible social platform. Still, if you follow these unspoken etiquette rules for being a good Twittizen, you should have no problems gaining followers the old-fashioned way.

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