With over 330 million monthly active users, Twitter is among the most popular and powerful social media platforms. You should aim to have many of these Twitter users follow you.
Why? Because gaining a larger following increase your brand’s exposure as more people will be interacting with your brand. Also, with a large following on Twitter, your brand will have more engagement, and thus build a deeper connection with your audience. This means your audience is more likely to trust you, and thus embrace your recommendations.
However, despite people knowing the benefits of having a large following on Twitter, many still struggle to grow their following. Between harsh competition and the short attention spans of the online audience, the road to building a large following is a little bit difficult, but you can still make it.
There are a few tricks of the trade that I want to share with you today. If you implement these 23 tips to increase Twitter followers, your Twitter account will be able to attract loyal and genuine followers.
So, let’s get started…
1. Tweet often
As opposed to Facebook and Instagram, Twitter calls for a more aggressive strategy. So, how often should you tweet? The frequency depends on your goals. If you want to maintain a healthy engagement, 1 to 5 tweets a day are fine. But if you want to increase your reach further, aim for 10-15 tweets.
Keep in mind that you have to tweet content that is relevant to your target audience. You can tweet about stats, breaking news, personal updates, relevant industry articles, etc.
The aim is to fill up your Twitter feed with fresh, relevant content so that your followers can know that you are active and worth following. To help you with this, you can look for social scheduling software, whereby you queue up content without having to tweet in real time.
2. Tweet throughout the day to target all followers
You should have a schedule where you tweet every few hours to keep your followers engaged and be on their feeds now and then. That’s why I recommend that you get a social scheduling tool that helps you queue tweets in advance. You can pre-schedule monthly or weekly tweets.
Being consistent in your timing means that your audience will know when to check your account and when to expect your tweets in their feeds.
3. Engage, interact
The surest way to get more followers on Twitter is to engage with other users on the platform. This means retweeting, liking tweets from people in your niche/industry, and replying to other people’s tweets.
By engaging with other Twitter users, you will get your brand name in front of these users, and this will increase the chances of them following you. What’s more, when someone sees you retweeting their tweets often, they are most likely to return the favor and do the same for your tweets.
4. Reply when people mention your brand
This can be challenging for big brands or brands that receive a lot of engagement. However, doing your best to respond to people who mention your brand goes a long way in making them feel special.
A simple thank you or answering a question your audience asked can generate a conversation and make a person want to engage with your tweets in the future. If it is a criticism, you should respond in a polite manner as soon as possible.
5. Engage people on trending topics using #Hashtags
Hashtags drive Twitter and are an important part of Twitter usage. Not only do hashtags help a relevant audience find you when they search the trending hashtag, but they also help to increase engagement.
Tweets with hashtags see a 1,065% increase in engagement as compared to tweets with no hashtags. This makes sense, considering that people who have not followed you will also see your tweet and follow you.
Keep in mind that too many hashtags can have a negative impact on engagement. Stick to one or two most relevant hashtags.
6. Tweet hand-crafted content
While social media has offered platforms where many users are inclined to share anything, including something they have copied elsewhere. While they can get away with this, brands rarely get away with duplicate content easily.
That’s why it is important that you come up with original, hand-crafted content for you to stand out. Being unique will help you get more followers easily.
7. Use Twitter analytics to know what your audience like
You can learn more about your audience, their interest, and their behaviour by using Twitter analytics. Knowing what your audience wants and likes can help you tailor your content to be more likable and relevant to them. Besides, a Twitter analytics tool will help you know when most of your audience is online.
With this information, you will know what to tweet and when to tweet. This information will help you attract more followers and keep the existing ones engaged.
8. Automate your workflow
By using a smart automation tool, you can easily discover a new audience, increase followers, engage them in quickly time, and save time involved in tweeting and retweeting posts. Most tools offer an auto follower, re-tweeter, and liker feature that allows you to get more organic followers.
However, when using an automation tool, use caution to avoid looking like a robot.
9. Use website/blog links in your profile
Having a website or blog link can establish authority and increase followers. People can check out your blog and get to know more about you. This will also have an added bonus of an increase in traffic to your site.
10. Mix your own content with curated content
If you want to increase traffic to your site, the best way to do it is to add links to your blogs or web pages to your Tweets. Also, make sure that you share content from others as well. You don’t want to make it all about your brand. Sharing links to valuable content you find on the web will encourage your followers to pay more attention to your tweets. This will help you retain followers.
11. Get verified
Getting verified makes you a trustworthy brand in the Twitter community. It also shows that you are an authority in your industry. This, in turn, attracts more followers to you.
12. Use Twitter’s advanced option
Other users who are interested in your area of expertise may want to follow you to find more content. Using Twitter’s advanced search can help you find followers of your competitors using hashtags or words. This can help you understand what your audience likes and dislikes.
13. Use Twitter-optimized images
As is evident, tweets with visual content get more engagement than those without. Therefore, you should strive to tweet with some sort of accompanying image. Images are more likely to get your audience to stop scrolling and take a look at your post and probably like, leave a comment, or even retweet. Better engagement means better reach and more followers.
If you find the ideal image to accompany your blog post, you need to ensure that its dimensions are a 2:1 ratio. This is the best way to ensure that the in-stream preview doesn’t leave out the best parts of the picture.
14. Include videos often
Having images is great, but tweets with videos have a more emotional connection with other users. Videos inject extra life into your posts, thereby increasing engagement and click-through rates.
Studies show that 82% of Twitter users enjoy engaging in tweets with videos, resulting in a higher willingness to follow you. Remember that Twitter users are more likely to appreciate a native video compared to those posted by third-party players.
15. Tweet infographics
Did you know that Twitter users are more likely to click on an infographic than purely textual text? Well, infographics do take time to create, but they have proven to be extremely effective. To create your infographics, think of what step-by-step or how-to representation that would appeal to your potential followers.
16. Use polls
A Twitter poll allows you to pose a question to your audience with up to four options to respond with. No asking them to fill out a form, or directing them to another page. It takes 2 seconds at most.No matter how many followers you have, Twitter polls will help you get more engagements and followers.
17. Run contests using relevant hashtags
A hashtag contest is another excellent way to encourage followers to engage. You could reward loyal fans with a following contest as a way to boost your reach, encourage retweets, and gain followers. You need to be careful, though, and use trends relevant to your brand, or you may end up losing followers.
18. Optimize profile image and header
Considering that a few brands use bots to post content, being human can put you far much ahead. Not having a professional human face can be a turn-off to prospective followers, especially for personal accounts.
For a business account, you can use a company logo. Choose a photo that’s appropriate for your brand and don’t make it any bigger than 400 by 400 pixels squared.
Once you have your profile photo, you can find or create your header—this is an opportunity to promote your products and reinforce your brand. Currently, Twitter header dimensions are 1500 by 1500 pixels.
19. Create an engaging bio
Your bio is an opportunity to show some personality and let people know who you are or what you do. It’s also where potential followers know why they should click the follow button.
So, don’t be nervous about getting a little creative with the 160 characters you get.
Your bio is searchable because it’s indexed in a Twitter search. Make sure to include the main keywords that people use to search for your brand or your offering. This way, people will find you easily and thus follow you on Twitter.
20. Use Twitter threads
Twitter threads are a great tactic to use if you want to generate more interest. Many Twitter threads end up generating hundreds or thousands of engagements, thereby increasing your chances of reaching new audiences and growing your following.
You should start off with an enticing intro tweet that grabs your audience’s attention. Use threads to give a story about your brand, a story that relates to your brand, create a roundup post, share a tutorial, offer valuable tips about a topic in your industry, etc.
21. Include Twitter share or click-to-tweet buttons in blog posts
By having a Twitter share button or click-to-tweet button in your blog posts, people will be able to easily share your posts on Twitter, and this will increase your brand exposure. With more exposure, people will begin to search for you on Twitter and follow your brand.
22. Encourage people to follow you on Twitter in your blog and website
You don’t always have to focus on looking for followers on Twitter, as you can also find Twitter users on other platforms. Encourage your website visitors or blog readers to follow you on Twitter.
23. Tweet shareable content
When it comes to shareable content, it means content that is valuable to your reader. When you post content that doesn’t revolve around you or your brand, people are more likely to share it with others.
Also, don’t use complex or ambiguous words- say it point-blank without over-describing or using complicated language. This way, many people will relate to your tweet, and thus share it with their followers. This helps to increase your brand exposure, which in turn leads to more followers.
Bottom Line
Almost all these tips and strategies are free to implement, well, apart from automation that requires a paid tool. Therefore, you should be able to implement them easily and quickly.
There are over 330 monthly active users, and with the right strategies, you can get a significant number of these to follow you.
