Recently, I was named one of the 2015 Top 50 Content Marketers to Follow on Twitter. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised. Before the summer of 2014, I never really bothered with Twitter. I concentrated on Pinterest, Google+ and Facebook. I struggled with Facebook after they've made so many changes and I realized that it may not be the best social media site for my type of business. So, I decided to give Twitter a shot. I mean, I had an account, I just wasn't using it. I've done plenty of Twitter work for clients. Why wasn't I using it for my own business? Well, that decision was a fantastic move. I now have more than 1,000 followers and I didn't buy a single one, either. What did I do to get so many followers and to get named as a person to follow?

1. Start Thinking Like a Follower

One of the best things I did was change my way of thinking. I'm hard headed, so this was a challenge! I stopped thinking like a business owner and started thinking like a follower. When I started posting the kind of tweets I would like to see, people took notice.

2. Don't Think too Hard

Some people can spend 30 minutes composing a tweet. No need to be fancy! Sometimes, you don't need to think too hard about a tweet. Just post the name of the article you are linking to, if the title's good. No need to reinvent when things are already great.

3. Hashtag, Hashtags, Hashtags

ALWAYS use hashtags. I can't stress this enough. Hashtags are how people find you. Without a hashtag your tweets are only going to be seen by your current followers and you won't pick up any new ones. Make sure your hashtag is a keyword or phrase that people are actually searching for, though. You don't want to have a useless hashtag taking up precious character space.

4. Post Throughout the Day

Post at least once in the morning, once in the evening and once at night. I find this is a good practice to catch people who visit Twitter at different times.

5. Ditch the Follower to Following Ratio

Don't worry about your followers / following ratio. Once upon a time, marketing gurus told you that your following number should be way less than your follower number. A small following number made it seem like you're an authority and people were coming in droves to follow you without any reciprocation. Notice how I'm using past tense to describe this tidbit of advice. It is no longer true.

I've found that if you don't follow back, you will get unfollowed in less than 24 hours for every 1 out of 10 follows. There are apps that allow people to find out who isn't following them back and lets them to unfollow those people with the click of a button.

I'm not saying you need to follow every single person that follows you. That would make your feed full of stuff you don't give two shriveled bananas about. If you like someone's tweets, though, follow them! You might just learn something from them.

Got any Twitter tips you would like to share? Tell me on Twitter! My not so clever Twitter handle is@alinabradford .