17 Killer Ways to Increase Your Twitter Following
By Cody Wheeler
Ok, so I might be a little radical here, but I'm going to go ahead and argue that
Twitter is more of a quantity game than it is a quality game. That's not to say that you
don't want targeted Twitter followers. I wouldn't have written this post otherwise.
In any case, I can't think of any negative effects to having a whole bunch of followers
on Twitter. It doesn't cost you anything to have more followers like it does to have a
larger email list. Just make sure you follow back the people you want to connect with so
they can DM you. Otherwise you're missing out on a big advantage of Twitter.
With that being said you'll still want to go try to get targeted followers so I'm not
going to talk about followback lists or auto adding tools or anything like that. I'm
talking about getting legit followers that want to listen to you. Many of them will happen
naturally, but some you will have to seek out.
Keep in mind throughout this list that according to Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, and the
author of the Social Media Marketing Book you want to try to keep your follower count
higher than your following count. Data shows that people are less likely to follow you if
you have more than a 1:1 following to follower ratio.
Typically people won't follow you back after three days. To find the people who aren't
following you check out Twitter Karma. It's a free tool that works legally (right now)
with the Twitter API.
With that being said. Here's the list of how to get more targeted twitter followers.
1. Find the most influential people in your market and check out their followers.
Follow their followers. These are likely people who would like to follow you (Tip: If you
@mention their name before you follow them you will increase the chance that they will
follow you back). Careful not to follow too many people at once or you'll violate the 1:1
rule and appear spammy. Try to make this a natural process. Keep it to 20 a day or so.
This is a great task for a VA to do for you.
2. Make use of hashtags when posting updates. This will allow people that are
searching that term find you easier. Don't spam hashtags. Try to keep it to a max of two
per update and make sure you throw in hashtagless (yes, I made that a word) updates from
time to time.
3. Use search.twitter.com or the twitter search box to find people who are tweeting
about your specific search terms. For example if you like to Tweet about health you
might search, diet, exercise, fitness, biggest loser, etc. Follow these people and hope
for a follow back. Most Twitter management tools such as TweetDeck have a search feature
built in that does the same thing.
4. Participate in events that make us of Twitter hashtags - Many webinars and even
live events such as #IMS (Inbound Marketing Summit) in the social media and internet
marketing space will use hashtags that allow users to comment on Twitter about their
experiences. You can get the attention of a lot of new followers this way, not to mention
learn a lot.
5. Get a custom bumper sticker or t-shirt made with @Yourtwittername on it
(Caution: Only do this if you're comfortable with being recognized as a complete geek)
6. Use a Twitter scheduling tool to tweet throughout the day. The more you use
Twitter (and provide quality tweets), the more followers you are going to have, plain and
simple. Different people are on Twitter at different times, usually quite randomly. Most
people can't be on Twitter all day, nor do they want to be. It can be one hell of a distraction.
Scheduling tweets in advance will allow you to be at least somewhat active all day
instead of in 10 minute Tweet bursts. There are a ton of tools out there that let you
schedule Tweets. I prefer TweetDeck for its simplicity. Just get up a few minutes early,
schedule 10 tweets or so and hit the road.
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