These and many other questions bedevil the casual Twitter user who often thinks that social media marketing only revolves around the Facebook universe.

Social media marketing at scale includes participating on as many social networks as possible that are relevant to your target audience. You need to have your brand on the major social networks and build large followings. Enterprise class tools for facilitating social at scale are now starting to emerge from players such as Exact Target and Adobe.

On Twitter one or two tweets per day with a random message to 200 followers is not going to cut the marketing mustard. You need to scale it up.

Twitter is growing and gaining traction rapidly which stems partly from last years inclusion in Apples’s new mobile operating system and  is now embedded in its mobile menu system.

On social media it is important to listen and engage. The other truth is that “bigger is better”. You need to create big tribes on big networks.

This will give you the reach you need to continue to scale.

How Do you Build a Large Twitter Tribe?

I am going to assume that your blog or website has great content already. Content that has good headlines, published in a range of media types, is well written and structured are important elements in building the foundation to any substantial long term  presence online.

Letting people know that you have this awesome information to help them solve problems and provide “how to information” is the magic sauce to take your brand from invisible to visible.

Building a large Twitter tribe is one of the most efficient ways to distribute that content.

How do you do that?

One of the best simple and free tools that I discovered that can help you achieve that and also abides by Twitters terms of use is Tweepi.com.

What are the steps to attract and build Twitter followers using this tool?

Step One: Create an Account on Tweepi.com

This is quick to do. All you will need is a Twitter account and enter some basic information and you are done. Best of all, it is “free”.

Step Two: Follow the Followers

One of the main drivers of growth on social networks is creating a list of friends and followers from Facebook to Twitter and beyond. This is where the multiplier effect of sharing drives traffic and brand awareness.

In this step we will “follow followers”. So go to the main dashboard area of Tweepi after you login and click on the “follow followers” button

Step Three: Follow the “Big” Names on Twitter

Most of us know who the big names are in your industry. Some will have substantial Twitter followers. It could be photography, surfing or fashion. In social media it is people like Chris Brogan (currently over 200,000 followers).  Type in their Twitter name. eg “ChrisBrogan” (remember it must be their exact Twitter “handle”).

Then click “start following”.

Step Four: Follow Forty Followers at Once

You can now follow forty followers of Chris Brogan that are already qualified as interested in social media because that is the main reason they are following him (This is what you call an already qualified list). This can be done with just two clicks.

This methodology can be applied to any industry actegory.

Tweepi applies Twitter rules to allow you to follow a certain number of people on Twitter at a time. Don’t be too aggressive in building a Twitter tribe but take it one step at a time. Follow maybe 20-40 people and see how many follow you back.

As we know on social media networks, if anyone follows you then there is a sense of obligation to friend or follow back (of course not everyone will follow back) but if you have good content then a good percentage of those will reciprocate and follow back. Keep in mind that Twitter will allow you to quickly build the list to 2,000 with no limits. Once you are following 2,000 people Twitter applies a ratio that stops you following more than a 10% larger ratio than follows you.

Example: If 1,900 people follow you then you can only follow 1,900 plus 10% (2,090) 

So performing this Twitter tactic regularly will allow you to grow your followers. Just rinse and repeat.

This tactic was a big part as well as the creating and publishing of content on a consistent and persistent basis that allowed me to grow my Twitter tribe to over 100,000.

Early in my social media endeavours, this was vital to grow my tribe on Twitter. Today with 3,000 to 4,000 following each month organically it is not as important.

I look forward to hearing your stories about your success at building your tribes. on your social networks.

What Twitter tools do you use?