Best ways to get real Twitter followers who are your target demographic?

What are some strategies to grow your audience on Twitter? My blog gets a decent amount of traffic, but few people click on any of the several Twitter buttons I have and connect with me. How can I expand my reach and be seen as an expert in my field?

Before I provide some strategies, here is the barebones, old-school way people have gotten followers:

1. Find relevant people
2. Follow them
3. They follow you back
4. Unfollow those that didn't follow you back after a week or so

It definitely works, but the relationship value is almost zero. Here are some better ways:

• Tweet regularly. Send out at least one a day and related to your niche. Use target keywords and make them interesting.
  
  
• Retweet helpful content. It can land you on the radar of relevant people (when you retweet them).
  
  
• Use hashtags but don't go overboard. It will attract people searching for those tags.
  
  
• Promote on your blog or site. Is the twitter button your site easy to find?
  
  
• Put this line at the end of each blog post and link it to your account: You should follow me on twitter.

Twitter is a strange beast. In my experience, the best way to get followers is to engage in, and add value to, conversations.

Having a gazillion followers isn't the goal. Having followers that you can/do interact with is the aim. Search for some of Gary Vaynerchuk's videos about using social media for more inspiration.