So, you've found a cool person on Twitter. You've clicked the 'follow' button. You wait, feverishly crouched over your computer, anticipating a follow back confirmation email. It doesn't arrive. You go to bed wondering where that email is. It's still not there when you wake up. You wail "Why? Why? Why?". Well, here are a few tips for avoiding the virtual cold shoulder.

Talk to them. Send the person you've just followed an @reply message. Maybe just introduce yourself, or respond to one of their tweets. It shows that you're not a spamming twitter bot.

Avatar. Make the effort to upload an avatar to your account, preferably a photo of yourself. Avoid the stock image of a smiling businesswoman as used by many a spammer.

Bio. Add a short bio about yourself to your account. If you have a website or blog be sure to add the link.

Say something. Basic, but do remember to actually tweet. Joining Twitter then immediately following hundreds of people while only having tweeted a couple of times looks bad.

Say something useful/interesting. Don't just retweet others, or tweet nothing but quotes and links.

Swearing. A bit of swearing is OK, but don't let it get out of hand, it will inevitably put some potential followers off.

Twitter clients. A subtle point, but experienced Twitter users will be suspicious of an account that only ever uses tweet auto-posting services like Twitterfeed.

Breadth of subjects. Don't be a single event or issue account. If you have a one off concert or festival to promote why not open an account for your company and tweet about other things as well? If you sell online, don't just tweet links to products on your website, use twitter as an interactive customer tool that will engage users.

Privacy. Some people prefer to protect their accounts and tweet in private, which is fair enough. Remember though, that any potential follower will have little to go on when working out your tweet style.

Follower/Following ratio. Having many more follows than followers looks bad. It's a bit of a vicious circle as potential followers will wonder why no-one is following you back. Also, one of the surest signs of a spammy account is thousands of followers but hardly any tweets.

Stats. Remember that everything is public on Twitter, unless you protect your tweets, so people can easily look you up on a site such as TweepStats and check out your account.

At the end of the day, some people will never follow back. They may only follow a select group, or be inundated by requests @stephenfry style, have hit twitter follow limits or may just not be into what you tweet.