Twitter is an online social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters. Twitter can be a great way to promote you, your brand or your company. Actors, writers, sports stars and others are turning to Twitter as a way to connect with fans and promote themselves to millions of people across the globe. Twitter is also a great way for bloggers to gain more attraction in the blogosphere and get noticed.
The keen marketer will know that Twitter will offer him a rich source of potential traffic but how do you effectively reach those people and get them to follow you? How do you build up a huge Twitter following?
Here are 10 best tips and core concepts on how to grow your following gradually.
Here are 10 best tips and core concepts on how to grow your following gradually.
10 Tips to Increase Followers on Twitter
1. Twitter Bio
Your Twitter bio information is key and it is important to front load your bio with strategic keywords. Make sure you take the time to compose a Twitter bio that will reveal the message that you want others to know about you. What do you want them to know about you? Your bio will inspire people to follow you or not. Take the time to make it count.
Made some tweets before following someone. You want to post tweets that will inspire people with trust and confidence in you. Instead of focusing on increasing follower count, you can focus on generating quality content and followers will come on their own. Your tweets should be about your business. Provide links to your blog, website or content that you penned to let people know who you are.
2. Follow Other Users
This is the most basic step, to gain huge followers is to follow someones others. Twitter requires that you follow up to 10% more people than are following you. Growing twitter followers without reaching out and following others is extremely tough. You need to reach out to others who are in your interest and start following them. If you are providing great content, chances are, they’ll follow you back. To do this effectively you need to find the right people to follow. Many Twitter users follow anyone that follows them, while others check to see if the profile is active before deciding to follow it. You can find interesting people to follow by doing a Twitter search.
3. Be Active
Don’t just link your web feed to your Twitter profile. Post messages and make your Twitter page a place to connect with your readers. The more active you are with quality content, conversations, and engagement the more likely you will show up in searches or be seen by others followers who have Re tweeted you or had a conversation with you.
4. Be Engaging
Engage with people if they tweet you and it’s not spam, but a comment, observation, question etc. Ask questions. Conduct polls. Find ways to engage your followers in the discussion. Reply to people’s tweets, give them a compliment or thank them for sharing. When you reply to or have conversations with people they are twice as likely to follow you. These people may also decide to send you @ messages, which will also make their followers aware of you.
5. Be a Resource
One of the best ways to gain new followers is to be a resource. Social Media has become one of the largest fastest growing ways for people to get news and info on their favorite or most interested topics. The more of a resource you are the more likely people are going to be follow you. Share news, tips, advice, answer questions etc. Bottom line: add value and you will grow your follower base.
Instead of focusing on increasing follower count, you can focus on generating quality content and followers will come on their own.
6. Keywords and Hashtags
Hashtags are like keywords, and by appending tags to your tweets they will be easier to find within Twitter. The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet. Using hashtags that large influencers use will get you noticed by people in those niche circles. Use good keywords. If you are tweeting your keywords, even if you aren’t using hashtags, your tweets will show up in searches. Hashtags earn your tweets twice the amount of interaction as those without.
7. Retweet
“Share the Love” Re-tweet other people’s tweets and some will return the favor, which will expose you to other people who may then decide to follow you. When someone tweets something of interest, retweet it, the act of forwarding another user’s tweet to all of your followers. When people do re-tweet your tweets then you should thank them. This is a great way to participate in the Twitter community and get people involved. Retweet is an important part of your Twitter strategy to increase the numbers of followers. To get indexed by Google or other search engine Retweet a very popular tweet that you want your name to be associated with.
8. Keep it Real
If you’re going to join the conversation on Twitter, one of the most important things to remember is to keep it real. Make sure you mix real personality and a real voice to your tweets and avoid being a robotic-like Twitter messenger (a.k.a., spammer). Don’t be afraid to transparent & personal and also mix a couple few human tweets in with your business related tweets. The more real you are, the more transparent you are, the more people can identify & connect with you.
In order to be engaging and interactive like the social media best practices call for, there is an entertainment factor when it comes to Twitter.
9. Don’t Spam or Sell
Don’t be known as a spammer. If it is your intention to use Twitter to market to people it is recommended that you only have one marketing Tweet in every 10 Tweets. If all you do is try to sell people something, they will stop following you. Doing nothing but marketing tweets could get you labeled as a spammer. Remember Twitter is about being social first then marketing, if you do any marketing, second.
If you are using Twitter to market then look into software to do your Twitter work for you. There is one free website that can really help you use Twitter with more efficiency, Hootsuite.com. This service will submit your Tweets to a variety of sites for you. You will also be able to schedule your tweets so you can take your time to set up a day’s worth or more of tweets.
10. Add to Directories
Directories are a mixed bag, the concept of a twitter directory is the same as any other directory – users can find you, and you can find other users to follow, based on what your services are and what your twitter is about. There some best directories like WeFollow and Twellow, which you should add yourself to just for the passive follows even if you never interact with the sites again. Other directories, such as Twiends, can be used to hugely grow your followers.
Promote your Profile
Add a link to your Twitter profile to your blog, website and as part of your signature in email messages and discussion forums.
