There are plenty of suggestions out there on how to get more followers on Twitter, but here are the core ones I have found useful:
- Start posting interesting and relevant stuff from day 1. If you only have 10 posts and you start following a bunch of people, you might not have done enough to establish who you are. Users are skeptical of new profiles these days, so you really have to be creating the type of post a potential follower wants to see more of.
There are exceptions to this: Topical trends. Parody or joke accounts pop up now and then, tapping into a current event or popular joke that everyone can relate to.
These accounts manage to get a big following in a short space of time.
For example, when a lion was reported to have been seen roaming the countryside in Essex, UK - this happened on Twitter:
- Stay relevant - I can't stress this one enough. If it's your personal account you can tweet about whatever you want I guess, but if this is a project or business account - followers can only relate with your "social brand" if they have a clear idea what it's about.
Make it clear in your bio, your profile pic, and every single tweet. The odd topical tweet now and then is fine, but if I follow @EconomicsNews - I expect to see some economics news tweets. If that account started posting holiday photos and post-game analysis of the football, I might be disappointed. - Don't spam people. Social media isn't free advertising. Yes, you can build a following and get a significant amount of traffic if you play your cards right: But we are talking a relatively slow build with a lot of work and energy put into it.
You have to be a genuinely interesting account before you can consider "selling" your business on social media. - Follow people.
Replying and retweeting are great, favoriting may get you acknowledged by some people... But the greatest gift you can give someone that wants to boost their status on Twitter is to follow them.
When you follow someone, they will at least check you out. Some will follow you back.
Only follow relevant people though. What's the point in having 20k followers if only a few hundred are relevant to what you are talking about? Big stats are impressive, but engagement is the only thing that will get you some sort of ROI. - Try using some Twitter tools.
If it all gets too much, you may want to start scheduling tweets, monitoring mentions of your companyname/certain topics etc..
There are a bunch of tools out there that can help you:
Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Radian 6, Wildfire... These are just a few.
Twitter have their own Tweetdeck tool which is pretty cool, and I also like "Followerwonk" for discovering profiles.
Feel free to ask a new question about Twitter tools as I have plenty to say on this matter
Overall, my advice is just stay relevant, have fun, and be targeted. These are the key strategies that will keep your follower count growing.
