How to Increase Your Twitter 'Followers'

If you wish to use Twitter for social interaction or as a valuable marketing tool, you may find something of interest in this blog post.

Building Your Followers (social)

Imagine Twitter is a pub, bar or café that you've wandered into. Look around and see who you might want to chat with or perhaps you can overhear an interesting conversation you'd like to join. Interaction on Twitter is easier than real life - here are some ways to find some followers.

First, find some 'proper' people to follow, not the celebs that Twitter suggests when you first sign up. Many people use their location on their bio so you can search for your locality, e.g. Herts or Hitchin. You can also search using a football team or other keywords, such as Spurs or Doctor Who. People who you follow sometimes follow back.

Your tweets should be interesting to other people - give them something they want and if you can't think of anything, comment on a topical item.

You may find an interesting hash-tag link, sometimes these are trending or someone you follow may post one. If you join in a hash-tag game or re-tweet or 'favourite' an interesting tweet, people of similar interests may follow you.

Engage with people. Reply to their tweets. This often results in followers.

Building Your Followers (business)

Allocate half an hour each week to building your list of followers organically, searching for accounts to follow in your business catchment area and in related industries - including your competitors!

Review your followers and decide which accounts to follow back. If the number of accounts you follow becomes unmanageable, set up a list or lists for the tweets you are most keen to read (more detail below).

Ensure that your tweets are tweet-worthy, e.g. interesting / informative. Don't just promote your goods or service without interacting with your audience - you wouldn't dream of doing that in a face-to-face situation.

Similarly, read the tweets of those you follow and remember to use reply and/or re-tweet, as appropriate.

Tweet at least every week (preferably every day). Remember that if someone doesn't see your tweet at the time, they are unlikely to see it at all. And don't send too many tweets all at once - it will dominate your followers' timelines and potentially result in some un-follows. Use Twitter to announce news and offers, with links to your website pages.

Best advice: the more you put in to Twitter, the more you gain.

Using Lists

If you wish to follow specific accounts that are getting lost amongst the general tweets, create a List (or lists) and associate selected accounts with the list, e.g. major competitors, main clients. Lists may be public or private and you don't have to be following the accounts that you put in the lists.


Twitter.com/BPcUK