So you want more Twitter followers?
Here are some tips:
The Followback Method – This method involves following people in hopes they will follow you back (reciprocal tweet building). If you are looking to target followers in a certain industry, you can use the search feature to focus on let’s say “Social Media Marketing”. Once you get the results, simply start following people and watch the followbacks roll in.
Keep in mind, if you are looking to generate traffic to a website, blindly following people is not your best bet since when you post news or updates they will not be as incentivized to follow your link since it is not relevant to their interests. However, if you work hard to narrow your target audience with follows, you will convert more tweets to hits.
A few tips:
Twitter throttles your follows to 1,000 a day, and 2000 maximum followers (until you surpass an undisclosed followers/following ratio). This is important because if you are seeking followbacks and you dump your 2000 follows into unlikely followbacks and end up generating a meager 150 follows, then you are screwed. Now you will have to go back and unfollow non-followbacks and reinvest those follows into people more likely to reciprocate. Invest the time and effort to just do it right the first time and skip the backtracking!
To help manage your unfollowing, visit JustUnfollow.
Target people with close following/followers ratios. If you are looking to get people to followback, following someone like @SethGodin who follows ZERO people is not a good investment. For best results, follow Tweeters with close to 1:1 ratios (e.g. 31,532 following 33,374 followers), they are more likely to reciprocate the follow.
**IMPORTANT**: If you are using the followback method, be sure to check your followers tab everyday and follow people who have followed you or else they may unfollow.
Twitter has a rule against “aggressive following”, so I recommend that if you are using the followback method you follow just a few hundred people a day as to avoid account suspension or deactivation.
Twiends.com – Twiends is a website design to give incentive for people to follow each other on Twitter. After signing up for Twiends you are encouraged to give and recieve a virtual currency called “seeds”. By following someone you recieve seeds from them, and when people follow you they recieve your seeds. The trick here is to follow people to accrue seeds in order to offer an attractive number of seeds as a reward for people following you.
Twitclub.com – Twitclub is a website dedicated to gaining you followbacks. When you sign up, you agree to allow Twitclub to automatically followback anyone who follows you through Twitclub. This means you can visit the website and get a 100% followback on every person you choose to follow.
LinkeIn.com – LinkedIn is a social networking website where you can find “groups” dedicated to growing Twitter, Facebook, Google+ followers and likes. You can find discussions where thousands of people post their ID’s so you can easily identify others looking to build their network. Once accepted to these groups (some of them are “open”, meaning anyone can join), you can post your own ID’s for people to add or “like” you. Just be sure to reciprocate!
Some of these groups are:
-
Facebook & Twitter For Business
-
twitter innovators Innovation & Creativity Network of Tweeters
-
Twitter Strategies
-
Twitter
-
Twitter, Google-Plus, and Facebook for Sourcing and Recruiting
Tribes – Tribes are groups of people who promote and/or follow people within similar niches. This means if I run a website dedicated to photography, I can join a Tribe dedicated to photography so we all can follow/”like” each other, link exchange, and otherwise help promote one another.
If you are interested in checking out how Tribes work, visit: Twibes.
Tweet – Tweeting is a great way to gain followers. The more you tweet, the more visible you are, the more likely people will follow you (or retweet you!). Personally, I enjoy opening up the Twitter timeline and scrolling through to find tweets relevant to my interests and replying to, or retweeting them. Take as little as 15 minutes a day to engage your followers and other tweeters to build your exposure and gain followers.
**IMPORTANT**: Use https://bitly.com/ to shorten any links you tweet to save valuable space for the message you would like to accompany your link!.
Retweeting is another way to gain followers. If you like a tweet, you can retweet – this is generally regarded as one of the greatest compliments you can give another tweeter, and often times they will repay your kindness with a follow.
For those of us strapped for time, you can use Buffer to increase your Twitter visibility. Buffer allows you to preload tweets to be tweeted at peak times of the day without you being present (you can tweak when the tweets fire, if you desire different timing).
Buy Follows – Buying followers or Twitter accounts is strictly against Twitter terms of use (not to mention being unethical, shady and disrespectful to every legitimate tweeter out there), so I highly discourage it.
Twitter Adder – Twitter Adder is a program you can purchase which will automate searching, following, followbacks and unfollowing. I don’t use it, but it seems to be extremely popular.
Twitter Buttons – Add a Twitter button to your blog, website or forum to catch the eye of visitors and encourage them to follow you. A few great websites for Twitter Buttons:
In closing, I want to say that while there are many “easy” ways to build Twitter followers, you really need to consider why you want them. If you are just looking to spam people with offers/sales, don’t bother – most users are smart enough to see what you are up to and avoid you. If you are looking to engage other users, then you are on the right track! Good luck!
With kind regards,
Dan
P.S. Please follow me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/CommandCS