So, you want to get more Twitter followers…how do you do that?
It’s not that difficult – it just takes some time and a little thought.
The easiest way to get followers is to follow people yourself. Many will follow you back.
Those that do, now have the opportunity to see your tweets – and they may occasionally share your tweets with your own followers.
This is what you want: for people to see your tweets – and hopefully, to act on them (click your links), and to share them with others.
[Note: In this article, I’m going to refer to other Twitter accounts as “people.” It’s just easier that way. But, of course, some Twitter accounts also belong to organizations, and to companies. But in the end, they’re all run by people.]
So, who do you follow?
1. Follow the type of people who are likely to be interested in the type of thing you tweet about.
For instance, if you write about French fashion, you’d do well to follow these sort of Twitter accounts:
– French clothing designers
– French accessory designers
– Clothing and accessory designers from other places
– Fashion bloggers
– Travel bloggers
– Fabric designers & collectors
– Vintage fashion sellers and collectors
– Fashion news
– Fashion magazines
…and there are many more possibilities. These are all the sorts of people who are going to be interested in what you have to say.
2. Find others similar to you.
Follow them; they are likely to follow you back.
And don’t stop there – follow their followers. Click on “followers” to see them. Those who are following a Twitter account on the same topic as yours are pretty likely to be interested to what you have to say, too.
You can even go one step further: don’t only look to see who’s following them – look to see who they’re following, as well.
This is a great way to discover interesting new accounts to follow – ones which might like to follow you, too.
3. Pay special attention to leaders in your topic area.
These folks may not follow you back (the really big guys tend to follow back few of their followers) — but the people who follow them have good potential.
4. Don’t follow too many people
Following too many people – at least, all at once – is not a good idea, for two reasons:
– You can follow up to 2000 Twitter accounts, no matter how many followers you have. Once you get to 2000, a limit kicks in, and you can’t follow any more until your ratio of followers to following is an acceptable range. (Twitter doesn’t make the exact ratio public.)
– If you have more followers than accounts you’re following, it appears that you are someone worth following!
To put it another way – if you follow, for example, 1000 people but only have 200 followers, it will appear that you a) are on Twitter just to follow others, and b) don’t have what it takes to gather a lot of followers of your own.
Now, we both know that’s not true! But that’s usually the perception. So, don’t let it get too lopsided. It’s a good idea to have a pretty even follower to following ratio, with an eye toward eventually having significantly more followers than accounts you’re following.
(Here’s an article that explains about this in more depth.)
In the very beginning, you’re going to need to follow more people than are following you. But after a while, you’ll want to unfollow the folks who never followed you back. Which brings me to our next point:
5. Be realistic.
Not everyone is going to follow you back. That’s just the way it is. Don’t get hung up on them. Cut them loose, and follow someone else instead.
If someone doesn’t follow you back within a reasonable time (a week or two), here’s what to do:
— Unfollow them. (If they are someone important to you, feel free to keep following. But keep these to a minimum.)
— Add them to a list. Lists make it easy to organize and see tweets from people who you really want to keep track of.
5. Who not to follow.
Here’s who not to follow – even if they follow you:
– Spammers. You’ll know them when you see them.
– Those who only tweet self-promotional links.
– Those who never interact with others.
– Those promising to get you thousands of followers. Don’t fall for it.
– Those who don’t follow you back (see above).
– Those who are way outside your topic (maybe add them to a list instead, if you’re interested).
– People who have stopped tweeting.
6. Some more tips to get you off to a strong start.
– Don’t robo-tweet. You know how on some websites you can click a “share this” button and it’ll automatically make a Twitter post? Those are OK, but the auto-generated text usually looks spammy. So, edit the text. Say what you liked about whatever you’re sharing, personalize it. You can delete the “via @sometwitter account” part at the end, too – that is just a plug for the author’s own Twitter account.
– Don’t just automatically tweet your blog post title with a link. Though that’s sometimes OK, try to mix it up. Instead, pick an intriguing line or question from the post, or write something really enticing.
– They don’t call it “social media” for nothing. Twitter isn’t meant to be a self-promotion feed. Of course, you’re going to want to tweet out links to your own website content. But the more you engage with others – and help them get the word out about their work – the more they’ll want to help you out, too. Make connections, become a resource in your field.
– Remember to engage with your followers – and those you follow, too. Answer questions, comment on their tweets. Re-tweet the most interesting ones (with your comment, ideally).
– We have lots more tips for you – see our article, How to get many more Twitter followers in just 5 minutes a day.
That’s the basics of it!
This strategy should result in a growing Twitter following. Got questions? Just email me and I’ll be glad to help.
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