We have seen many blogs/websites showing “follow me” banners and links. But, it would be better to show the social proof to arise their willingness to follow(Better to have atleast 100 followers, before showing the follower count).
We can show our Twitter follower count (much like a feedburner chicklet) by using Twittercounter.com. TwitterCount uses Twitter Authentication API while you use your Twitter username and password to sign in, so there is no problem.
If you authenticate your Twitter ID, then your ID will be displayed in the “Interested to follow” field, so that you may expect some more targeted followers.
You can use TwitterCounter services even without authentication. Just follow below procedure:
Replace my Twitter ID (technotip) with your Twitter ID:
For stats: http://twittercounter.com/technotip
Follower Count Badge: http://twittercounter.com/counter/?username=technotip
or
http://209.20.76.117/counter/?username=technotip
You can use anchor tags to link to your Twitter profile:
<a href="http://twitter.com/technotip" >
<img src="http://twittercounter.com/counter/?username=technotip" ></a>
For more buttons, more colors! goto TwitterCount.com
If you are using WordPress and looking for a plugin, then you can make use of Twounter. It is a WordPress Plugin that fetches the number of followers for a twitter profile and returns it in plain text format. You can then use your CSS skills to style your follower count number.
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Use the
<?php echo twounter(’username’) ; ?>function in your template files to show the number of Twitter followers. (replace ‘username’ with your Twitter user name) -
If you want to show it inside post then, use shortcode
[twounter]username[/twounter]
Thanks for sharing this info. I had less than 100 followers and I was displaying it on my site. A fellow friend saw it and we chatted via Gmail chat and he told me to rather not display it as my followers were very low. Lets just say that I had just over 60 at that stage.
@George Serradinho, Showing Twitter followers count or the feedburner chicklet is for providing social proof and if we doesn’t have much followers yet, then its better to wait till we have some reasonable followers. Its like, some one entering a big hotel and seeing no customers inside, feels somewhat awkward right? Your friends have given you right advice. Btw, if you are near to 60 followers, then its not that hard to reach 100 followers. You may find this article helpful -> 60+ Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers