Chasing the almighty Tweet? How do you build a following? Here’s five steps to exponentially growing your Twitter follower list.

1. Make sure you have a photo up. No-one likes following a weird google-eyed abstract design. Have an interesting bio posted.

2. Do NOT ‘private setting’ your Tweets. Let folks see what you are taljking about – you’ll get more followers if they can ‘preview’.

3. Interlink. Link your Twitter account to LinkedIn and Facebook and your blog or email signature. This keeps the juice flowing. The more people you attract, the more will ultimately land on your Tweet, and follow you on Twitter.

4. Target reciprocators. These people have almost equal large amounts of followers compared to the people they follow. Their mantra is, “You follow me, I’ll follow you”.

5. Tweet around 4 pm EST every Friday, if possible. Apparently,  Dan Zarrella (internet marketing scientist and author of “The Science of Retweeting”) spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets.

This lead to the institution of #followfriday, which some swear by and others find boring.

Do pay attention to hash marks and shortening your urls for more space within your 140 characters. Above all, keep your tweets real time, vital and interesting to your prospective followers.