How To Become Famous on Twitter

WARNING: The information contained herein might make you so famous that your personal space will go for a toss and you'll be hounded by paparazzi all your life.

Yes, you might have a legion of screaming fans and your face might get featured on the cover of national magazines as well. But if you can't handle the pressures that fame brings along with it, stop right now.

You have been warned.

Cool, so you do want to become famous on Twitter then.

You know what? It's not that difficult. All you need is an attractive persona that makes you stand out from the rest. A persona that resonates with a huge majority of the 380 million Twitter users out there.

Come, let me help you through 5 personas that you can adopt to become famous on Twitter.

Be Humorous

The road most travelled, most of the folks who join Twitter try this route. Heck! I myself tried to be “the funny guy” when I joined Twitter. Well, of course there's nothing bad in being humorous, but you must be original if you really want that huge fan base at your command. You will be flamed for plagiarizing tweets. The viral nature of Twitter is your best friend here; if you really have it in you to make people split up in laughter, then there's no stopping you. And you need not worry about the subject of your jokes at all as there's always something or someone to poke fun at on Twitter.

On any given day, there will be at least one hashtag where you can join in and show your funny side. I would also suggest that you engage in some playful banter with those who are participating in that hashtag. The more you communicate with people, the more you get noticed.

Also, having your own brand of humor works really well. While Ramesh Srivats and Avinash Iyer are famous for their puns, the Pagal Patrakar comes up with his own take on breaking faking news. And who can forget the inmitable Fake Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and his I-Am-God egotistical style of humor?!

In short: Be funny. Be original. Be different.

Show Your Expertise

What are you an expert on? Is there any topic where you have a strong foothold? Is it Politics? Marketing? Cricket? Music? Knitting? Be it any topic, you will find thousands of folks who share the same interest as you do.

A simple search on followerwonk.com using your industry keywords will help you find all those people who are just like you. You will see them creating and sharing content that is relevant to your niche. Now all you need to do is to strike up a conversation with them and let your ability shine through. Here, I would suggest that you read my post on how to connect with the influencers on Twitter.

Connecting with influencers from your niche will speed up the growth of your audience. But the bottomline is, if you are genuinely an expert on something, you are bound to get noticed by your colleagues and competitors if you network effectively.

Connect People

On Twitter, every day some one is out there looking to connect with a person who can be of some help. Not a single goes by where I don't see people looking for PG accomodations, designers, developers, blood donors, dog adpoters etc. A connector is someone who is highly networked and knows people from most (if not all) walks of life. He is up-to-date with all the info about the folks he is connected with and helps them find each other. Apart from getting noticed, connecting two people who are in desperate need of each other also generates that holy goodwill that will give you the best seat in heaven.

Let me give you my own example. There was this lady who urgently wanted to talk with employees from a certain IT company. I stumbled across her tweet through an RT and immediately connected her with 6-7 employees of that particular company, one being the COO.

Result? Goodwill aside, I am now connected to an influencer and a senior executive from that IT company.

Another connector whom I must mention here is Social Samosa's very own Ankita Gaba. She was the one who connected me with my very first client!

Be Helpful

This is something that I have seen very few people do on Twitter. And it shocks me as to how people who want to build a meaningful network around them are so lazy when it comes to helping others.

Social media is all about giving and sharing (no, I am not talking about sharing links to your blog post here). The more you give, the more your receive.

Some one is looking for guitar tutorials? Google and find the best guitar tutorial out there. Of course it might take some of your time but who said everything in life's easy?

The time and effort you spend helping people will one day prove immensely fruitful to you. However, the true essence of helping lies in not expecting something back in return.

Note: Always a keep a tab on the #help hashtag, a lot of people ask for help using it.

Be A Troll

Can't crack jokes? Don't have time to connect people? Not an expert in anything? Too lazy to help others? No problemo, amigos y amigas! Twitter is also the place where all the haters meet and have fun trolling their least favorite celeb. Just go out there and start trashing that one famous personality whom you hate more than mathematics.

You will be surprised to find that your views are echoed by a thousand others. In fact, there was this particular tweet where I had trolled Salman Khan which got RT'd like anything and got me several Shahrukh Khan fans! That tweet still gets bounced around amongst SRK fans.

However, the perfect examples of trolls-who-got-famous are Satan Bhagat (who is a big time Chetan Bhagat basher) and Bollywood Gandu (trolling the entire Bollywood).

And they aren't famous for trolling alone. They have fused trolling with their own brand of humor and look how famous they are now!

Bonus Tip – Be Outrageous

Ever heard of Govind Tiwari? No? Just check out his blog and see for yourself why he is a Superstar on Twitter. If you can you do something similarly outrageous, fame is inevitable.Well, that was it. Now that you are up to speed on how you can get that much elsuve 'fame' on Twitter, why don't you go out and don the one persona that suits you the best?

Featured Image credit: Ben Murphy