To do this you need a source feed, like your blog, or a generated feed, say from Google Alerts, you’ll also need an account with a URL shortening service like Bit.ly, and an account with TwitterFeed. You need the URL shortener because many links these days are way too long to fit in the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter, and you’ll want a comment or title to go along with the link in your tweet.

So the first thing you need to do is register accounts with Google, Bit.ly and Twitterfeed. Now, if you get really ambitious after this how-to, and decide that you want to go auto-injector crazy, with multiple Twitter accounts, then I recommend you create separate accounts in the three tools we’re going to use, that will align to each Twitter account you want to auto-inject content. Also, use your Twitter credentials when you register with these tools, just to keep things straight. Who wants to keep track of four or five sets of usernames and password? Not me!

Generate a Feed from a Google Search
Using Google Alerts, you can create as many feeds or email alerts as you like. Simply create feeds using search terms, in the Alerts service. You can use all the same syntax you use for basic Google searches, as well as advanced searches. You can also limit your search to news items or blogs, or you can create a Comprehensive search that will retrieve stories from the widest possible content that Google has indexed.

Inject the Feed into Your Twitter Account
TwitterFeed uses OpenID technology, this means it will share your Google account credentials. So make sure your Google account is open before logging into TwitterFeed. Also, TwitterFeed will need to register with your Twitter account too, so make sure your Twitter account is open and logged in.

Create a new feed in TwitterFeed, authenticate with your twitter account, then copy the feed link you created in Google alerts, and use it in the TwitterFeed create feed form. You’ll also need to select the URL shortener in the form. TwitterFeed currently supports nearly 25 different URL shortening services. We’re using Bit.ly because it has excellent statistical tracking of click throughs on the link it generates. So, you’ll be able to track, in near-realtime how many people clicked the link in your auto-generated tweet.

Once you configured the feed and the URL shortener, you can also configure the frequency on which TwitterFeed check the original source for new content. You can configure as many of these feed injectors as you please. But don’t go too crazy, because if you generate too much content, people may complain about it and un-follow if it becomes an annoyance.

Well, that’s it! If you sit back and consider the types of services you could potentially create with such a capability, your head might explode. If you want some ideas, then I suggest you subscribe to the TwitLinker newsletter, which is published weekly.

A pattern started to develop. The same high-follower Twitter users were following then un-following me. Hmmm. So I peered into these transient followers and found most of them to have the phrase “social media consultant” in their bio. Interesting.

Well, near the end of January of this year (2009) I started reading more and more about Twitter, then major stories started appearing on the nightly news, seemed like one story a night. And I thought, I’ve got to get a better understanding of Twitter. So, about 2 months ago I bought a couple of books and started a new account with the handle AppleInvestor. I wanted my new account to reflect the things central in my life, namely family, Apple, Investing, my dog, my philosophy on life, and my leisurely pursuits.

At first I wasn’t thinking much about how many followers I had, nor was I on a quest to make my follower list grow. I was more interested in attracting people with like interests, and developing quality relationships. So, I found a bunch of cool search tools that made it easy to find these people, and so I followed them. My content production was pretty low at first, then I started making connections with all sorts of wonderful and interesting people, and my followers started to grow. For the first five or six weeks I was averaging 25 new followers a day.

Then I started making some incredible connections with celebrities. Not movie stars, but people who have developed notoriety in their respective fields. These are people that normally wouldn’t have any reason to connect with me, nor I with them. Not that I wouldn’t want to, but they were simply inaccessible, or so I thought. Twitter made it easy to start conversations with these celebs, and over time, I developed a bond with several of these people, then started talking over the phone, and before I knew it I was talking business ventures. OMG! Making these connections on Twitter seemed to increase my visibility. These celebs had huge followings, and I guess when their followers saw our conversations they figured I was someone they should follow as well. My follower numbers started to accelerate, and I started to track my progress with tools like Twitter Grader and Twitter Counter.

Well, when I reached about 2,500 followers, my Twitter Follower numbers absolutely exploded. Very similar to the phenomenon observed last year when Oil rocketed to nearly $150 a barrel. Investors called that going parabolic. Why did my follower numbers go parabolic? Well, it was a confluence of things. I’d like to believe that it was due to amazing content. But I have to admit that the numbers may be juiced a bit. The thing is, I started to employ a follow-purge strategy, which I developed after studying similar behavior in some of my new Twitter friend’s accounts. The number of daily new followers started to increase, from 25 to 50, then 75, then 100 per day!

All during this time, I’m still pumping out what I considered to be great content. Sometimes as many as 150 to 200 tweets a day, but usually around 30-40! It was getting pretty hard keeping up with that pace, plus, the number of people that I was interacting with was consuming most waking hours. But I loved it, and still do! So, I found ways to automate some of the content, using my own blogs and filtered content from an aggregation tool I created, and started injecting that into my Twitter feed. I regulated the pace, and distributed the content, so that I didn’t look like a bot. Most of it was stuff I would have linked to anyways through my manual tweets. But now it was getting delivered 24 hours a day. This took a good deal of pressure off me, and let me concentrate more on the new relationships I was developing, each and every day. At this point I was at about 2,500 followers, after only 7-8 weeks on Twitter.

During this time, being the technology hound that I am, I discovered all sorts of Twitter-based tools. I also found some great iPhone Twitter clients. I accumulated these tools, bought some, most were free. I was fascinated by the breadth of functionality, and the creativeness people had. Then I realized that Twitter must have an API, that’s an acronym for Application Programmer’s Interface, or special code with standard functions for creating tools that interfaced with Twitter. There was even a Java-based tool, which I started fooling with. And in the course of this study, I learned all the rules of Twitter, and the restrictions that the original developers imposed on third party developers like me. In essence, I learned how to manipulate Twitter, and optimize the process of attracting followers.

A little while ago, I noticed all these MLM types popping up claiming that they held the secret to getting tens of thousands of followers, and I could make money doing it if I bought their system and became an affiliate. Wow, what a claim! Seems like a no brainer, right? So I bought a few of the programs, and examined their process. What I found was that the techniques they were using were pretty much what I had developed on my own. Except they emphasize a more automated approach, and didn’t really emphasize the relationship part, and the selfless attitude you should take trying to help others in need. Which I think was critical to my early and continued success.

So here I am, currently with 18,600 targeted followers (click image to enlarge), and growing at the rate of about 400 new followers a day. One day, about a month back, I had 800 new followers in a single day! I believe if I continue with my methodology, and great content, those follower numbers will continue to grow, maybe even accelerate. What I plan to do in subsequent posts is detail my methodology, and talk about how to optimize it. And from that, anyone should be able to significantly increase their followers and reap benefits that are the true potential of twitter.

My Advice: Getting a large number of followers isn’t, and shouldn’t be the goal. Your goal should be making connections with people that share your interests. I refer to these as targeted followers. But if you can get a large number of targeted followers, as opposed to random people, then you can build a very powerful and useful network that can be used in unlimited applications. So, go for quality over quantity. If you are able to get both quantity and quality, then you really have something special.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I have another Twitter account that has achieved almost 10,000 followers in just under 2 months, you should follow: TwitLinker. It has great links and tips on Twitter and Twitter people!