The biggest tip: Make interesting, useful tweets or retweets that your target audience will enjoy. Keep at it steadily over time.

It takes time for people to find you, so expect slow going at first. Have confidence that your visibility will grow as you persist.

Learn when your target audience is most likely to be active. Time some of your tweets accordingly.

Side comment: edit your Twitter profile so it has a clear relationship to the look of your main site. Logo, color choices, background image and other details all help. Use the opportunity to support your visual branding! It's one more thing to help to make you look credible to potential followers.

Develop ways to promote your Twitter account besides just tweeting and hoping people will find you. Add your Twitter URL to every email you send out; promote it on your website, and so on.

Second tip - ask yourself whether numbers matter.

More followers is good if your goal is more followers. But you don't actually want more followers, you want the right followers.

I have all but quit using a personal Twitter account a long time ago, but I'd say that rule of thumb and the one from buckworks are true for all things - Twitter, Facebook, email lists, clubs, churches etc. Twitter is no different: be useful, interesting and relevant to the people you are trying to attract - buyers, members, sinners.... but don't attract sinners if you're looking for buyers ;-)

don't attract sinners if you're looking for buyers

There'd be no one else left to sell to. ;)

What is the best practice to gain more people to follow you.

Are you referring to personal or business followers?

My global widget industry does not engage whatsoever on Facebook however many do on Twitter, in fact I have sourced a couple of new widget suppliers purely through Twitter.

If you are corporate then do ensure as buckworks suggested that it complements your own site however the best way to get more business followers is to start following companies from your own niche. I usually spend an hour every Saturday afternoon going through new suggestions from Twitter and checking out the new ones who are following me.

If you are asking about personal stuff, I haven't a clue!

Generally, you need to follow people on Twitter if you want followers. Having said that, some gain great audiences without following practically anyone back. Depends on what you're about. As mentioned above, it also helps if you're interesting. I offer information and spend a lot of time demonstrating my interest in my target community. Mix it up with humor, facts, and side stories. Show breadth in the information you share. Constantly marketing to your followers without demonstrating that you understand them and care about their interests is a turnoff.

You also need to test tweet frequency and time of day for you're tweets and you have to keep with it. I just launched a twitter account for a new project less than two weeks ago and it has resulted in almost 500 followers in that time. I've gotten more traffic from Twitter in the last two weeks than I have from all search engines combined for the last six months. Additionally, I'm making connections in my industry and getting link-backs, suggestions and content submissions. I can't say enough about how effective it's been but I'm working my ass off 12 hours a day to make it happen (constantly publishing new content and tweeting it out). I'm a convert and see social media as at least one very important alternative to depending on traffic from the SERPs. That's my two cents for the evening. Now I'm gonna go say goodnight to my followers. We're all human you know. ;)

Welcome to WebmasterWorld fortjames

Here's a few ideas:

Quality, not quantity, is the best aim, both in terms of tweets and of followers.

Too many tweets is a bit of a turn-off for me. Some people fill the stream with so much that it drowns out others, and i don't want to miss the gems buried in that mine of information.

Make sure you're profile is accurate and up-to-date.

Look for twitter lists in the appropriate sector, and follow those that are relevant.

Try and interact in conversations with those followers.

Build you own lists.

Without followers, you're doomed to the equivalent existence of shouting at a football match, but you've lost your voice.

Just to say what's already been said another way. Twitter is a very conversational medium. If you can engage your followers in dialog (back and forth conversations) and demonstrate that you're willing to favorite, re-tweet and reply to to their posts, you will find it a great place to build a community of followers who will pass your message along when it catches their eye, their sense of humor, social responsibility or whatever. It's easy to engage people in the back and forth but if you're doing this for business, you have to remember that you're representing a brand and you don't want to tarnish that brand. Avoid re-tweeting (or just plain tweeting) things with course language or that are otherwise in bad taste or just plain offensive. It's hard to take back something you've said or passed along under your name once it's on it's way to going viral.