5 Kick Ass Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers

• Share
• Email

• Share
• Email

OK – so you’ve got on Twitter, worked out what the hell it’s about and then thought “How on earth am I gonna get more followers?”

It’s true – it would be best to have an audience when it comes to Twitter – yes, you can just tweet to yourself as after all it is a micro blogging platform but in order to get the most out of Twitter, you need to get involved in the real time conversation.

One of the main things that grates me about the common answer to the above question is “Just follow more people and most will follow back” – ok great, so you can handle a million tweets flying at you 24/7/365? Are you interested in all those people? No? What a surprise.

Instead of thinking of ways to gain fake followers, you’d be best off following a few easy methods to gain followers who are actually interested in you.

Besides – seeing a Twitter profile with an unhealthy ratio of followers to followed just doesn’t look genuine. Are they really listening to all those people?

So – lets get onto 5 ways to increase your Twitter followers:

1. I always find a great way to start is by heading straight to Twellow and checking out the categories you are interested in (You should also register and claim/submit your profile so people can find you too). You should find plenty of interesting people within the niches you like or by using search terms.

Take the time to check out their profile, their site if they link to anything and also what they tend to tweet about. Something of interest? Follow them. If not, leave them be and move on.

There is a chance of course they’ll follow back, but you’re not doing it just for that reason, you’re doing it because they interest you and you feel you would be able to engage with them at some stage.

This step is to build the foundations for the later steps – so it’s well worth doing as this is a long term thing here!

2. Twitter’s search function is very powerful. There are many ways in which you can utilise it to get some awesome results but for this post, I will explain a quick and easy technique.

Get yourself to search.twitter.com and chuck in a search term using keywords from your industry/niche. Now you don’t have to do keyword research or anything, just use language you would when speaking to people about your interests/niche and that should get you some results. try a few words if you don’t get any joy the first time round.

Now what? Simple, check out the results (these are very up to minute or even second in some cases), if something catches your eye, check out their profile and see what they’re about. If you’re interested feel free to follow them, but you don’t have to. You can do something else.

3. Get into a conversation with them. @replies are very powerful. For anyone using Twitter for a while, will more than likely agree that they notice @replies most – a lot more than the normal stream of tweets. So all you need to do is reply to their tweet you found – “@username – yeah gotta agree there, blue widgets are far better than green.” Make a genuine reply. If you can’t really think of anything to say, then don’t as there’s no need to be fake about any of this. If they reply back – all the better! Carry on the conversation!

There is a high chance there are some leaders within your niche/industry/interests. They may be celebrities, or highly regarded within that sector. The main reason you may want to follow them is because they provide great industry info (You can engage when you enjoy certain tweets.)

Again, you don’t have to follow them – you should be selective with who you follow. Not out of snobbishness, but in order for you to enjoy using Twitter and actually have it as a great resource.

So, what do you do then? Well – notice their followers on their profile? Check them out! Have they Retweeted/@replied to anyone? Check them out! Start engaging with people who follow them and people they’ve Retweeted/@replied to and engage in conversation with them. Again, no need to be fake here, follow them if you find them interesting, @reply them if you have something relevant to say to their tweet.

4. Speaking of Retweeting, get involved in that too. As you follow more interesting people, you will no doubt read plenty of interesting tweets from them (if not, then why are you following them?) – why not share those with your followers? Retweet the good tweets and you also @reply the original tweeter as well in one hit – “RT @username – my cat just did a hi 5!” [Why not add a comment in square brackets if there are enough characters?]

So what does this achieve? It helps get you noticed. They are likely to thank you for the RT and you will then appear in their tweet stream with a clickable link to your profile. Nothing sneaky about this – it’s just genuine appreciation for sharing content. Please however, don’t make your tweets just contain RT’s – only RT things that you feel are worthy.

5. Post worthwhile content – sounds simple – and it is. As mentioned at the beginning of the post, you can just tweet without an audience but where’s the fun in that? Mostly people don’t want to know every single detail of what you are doing. It’s pointless. So, why not start to share content with your followers? Found a good article recently? Want people’s opinions on something? Tweet away! Just like the people you are following, become a resource for your followers.

Now it doesn’t mean you cant post every day stuff. I personally would encourage it as it shows your personality and mixes up your tweet stream.

OK – so how will all of the above get you more followers? You’d be surprised. You’ll start to get noticed and people will enjoy engaging with you and more than likely follow you because they are interested in you. Do you have to follow them back? No – but you might want to check in with them to see if they have said anything of interest.

The whole beauty of the above 5 tips, is that it will attract relevant and genuinely interested followers – how much better is that compared to having thousands of people following in the hope you follow back? MUCH BETTER!

Remember, it’s not a race, you will start gaining more followers slowly at first, and then it will increase in time and increase naturally without you necessarily doing anything at the time!

Bonus Tip: Actually, there is something else you can do to increase your followers. Over the course of time you are using Twitter, your profile will get viewed a lot of times. Make it attractive! Make sure the colour scheme is easy on the eye – get a custom background, make it nice and tidy.

Try and have a good photo of you – you’re a person, remember? People like to see other people’s faces, especially in the online world.

Fill out your BIO! You have 160 characters to play with, so make them count and make it interesting and put a link to your site/blog/or any other online profile you may have. Allow people to find out more about you.

You need to think of your Twitter profile as a landing page you want to convert. The aim being getting as many visitors as possible to follow you. A nicely thought out profile will naturally attract relevant people.

So there you have it! Would love to know your thoughts in the comments below, and of course, if you’re not already and find me interesting enough – then follow me! @johnhutson

Have you used any of the above methods? If so, how successful have you found them to be?

Popularity: 71%

Other Posts That Might Tickle Your Fancy

• Case Study – How Small Businesses Can Benefit From Using Social Media (0)
• SEO and Social Media News 9th May 2010 (0)
• Facebook Wants to be Your Home Page (0)