I’m going to save you at least $20-$200 today. I’m going to tell you the “secret” that so many websites with extremely long copy and bogus “complete online marketing strategies” will charge you for, with, shall we say, notes.

Many, but not all, of the “Social Media Experts” (see an interesting post that’s all the buzz by Mashable on the fact there’s over 15,000 of them) as well as other online pitch people will have tens of thousands of followers – and yet Tweet inane crap and rarely if ever conversate – or they use this technique, stop it once they’ve hit critical mass (5k, 10k followers), then play dumb and change their stripes.

We don’t use this procedure, have not used this, but I’ve seen it done and we’ve been asked by former clients to do it. To be clear, if we can’t set them on the right path, we fire them at that point. This is what many social media agencies assign to their interns to do, or you can do at home yourself.

Here’s how to get your useless Twitter followers:

Step 1: Follow People, 30-50 At A Time

Start following lots of people. But only so many in a day – 30, 40, 50, depending on how finnicky Twitter’s spam bots are – and then wait for a day or three. Many times, you can use keywords to semi-focus yourself (though they rarely work well because of context) or use the cover of the #FollowFriday or one of the top trending hashtags for this. Sometimes, people push it and go into the hundreds – I’ve seen it work, but to Twitters’ credit, they’re getting better at stopping this.

For instance, I had a friend today followed by a fishing company serving Texas (even though they live in Michigan). Beyond the geographic irrelevance, the last place I think this woman would be is in a bass fishing competition. I’ve never even seen her tweet about fishing.

This is just numbers for numbers sake – not actual engagement, not what actually drives sales. But the numbers sound cool to a culture of people who are used to buying big audiences.

Step 2: Unfollow The Ungrateful Saps Who Didn’t Follow You Back

If the people you’ve followed have not followed you back, unfollow them and find some more useless people. If someone unfollows you, promptly unfollow them.

Why useless? You’re playing a silly popularity game and not building any relationships. Relationships drive the sale in social media.

On a technical note, the unfollowing of the people who unfollow you keeps your balance of following/followers good in the eyes of the Twitter Gods.

The culture of “it’s rude to not follow back” I personally believe was created by these folks. I feel no obligation to follow you back, just like you should feel none to follow me unless you’re interested in what I have to say. It’s not rude. You’re not a bad person. I may just not find your tweets that interesting (whatever “interesting” is to ME).

Step 2a: Auto-DM Your New-Found “Friends” (Optional Jerk Move)

DM your new “friends,” thanking them for their follow with a link to click your junk (fan on a fan page, subscribe to blog, etc)

I haven’t mentioned it on here before, but having been involved in forums, online and digital media now for ten years, I HATE AUTO DMs. There’s few things that are more of a red flag than someone who gives you an automatic DM thanking you that they don’t get this space; if they got it, they’d realize that a thank-you DM (usually with a pitch to click some junk) is the last thing the mainstream Twitter user wants to see and is many times a turn-off. For real users of Twitter (non-marketing types who’d actually buy from you), that DM can appear in their text message stream and feels like crossing the personal line.

For Extra Punch: Set Up Your Own Personal Echo Chamber

Get yourself twenty or thirty (as few as ten will do) other faux Twitter handles, and Retweet/Reply yourself along with some other filler content to make it look like your links are important when people search you. It helps fool those “influencer” systems that rate Twitter users based on how often they’re referred to or linked to. Of course, only do the razzle dazzle until which point you might get a fire started – then promptly stop.

That’s just smarmy and part of the reason why so many normal users of social networks hate marketing types. If you saw the amount of comments around people who refuse to follow marketers – there’s a reason. And this easily implementable charade is one of them.

Summary

So there you go. There’s more finesse and technique possible, but that’s the basic outline. There’s services who will do all of this or parts of it for you either automatically via a script, or with a smarmy army of low-paid workers depending on your budget. To be fair, Twitter’s trying to stop this stuff – but the reality is, there’s so much monetary incentive they’re never going to plug all the holes.

In an upcoming post, I’m going to talk about some strategies on how to do it the right way. I’m looking forward to talking about happier things!