Shere Marketing Blog

10 ways to increase your followers on Twitter

No one wants to have no Twitter followers, but how do you grow your followers?  Here are some simple techniques to increase your followers on Twitter.

1. Add a photo to your profile.
2. Add a bio – include buzz words which will attract the right type of followers.  What are you interested in?
3. Tweet – if you don’t tweet anything – no one can find you! Use Hashtags # to make it easier for people to find your tweets.
4. Tweet regularly (in less than 127 characters makes it easier for other people to retweet your tweets) – think of at least 3 things you can tweet about each day. Be careful not to appear spammy only tweet relevant interesting content that is the key.
5. Re-tweet other people’s tweets.  They are more likely to follow you.
6. Create Twitter lists – if you look organised and are a font of knowledge or information, people will follow you.
7. Get listed – think of a reason why people should list you.  Your job, hobby, what sort of list should you be on? Is this clear from your bio?  Your tweets?
8. Have you integrated your social media profiles?  Do your Facebook or LinkedIn friends know you are also on Twitter?  Let them know.
9. Add your Twitter ID or a link to your Twitter profile  to your email signature, and your website.
10. Be interesting, original and consistent.  Don’t start and stop tweeting.

Do you have any other ways to increase your followers on Twitter?

10 ways to find people to follow on Twitter

You need to grow your Twitter circle by following people, letting people know you are in the neighbourhood, but how do you do this? Here 10 ways to find people on Twitter.

1. To find which of your friends/contacts are already using Twitter, upload your contacts from email address books (Yahoo, Hotmail & Messenger, Gmail, AOL supported).
2. Upload your contacts from LinkedIn
3. Find Twitter lists to follow using  Twitter Directories, E.g. TweetDeck Directory http://www.tweetdeck.com/directory/, and Listorious http://listorious.com
4. Using “Who to Follow” navigation – view suggestions.
5. Using “Who to Follow” navigation - browse interests.
6. Using “Who to Follow” navigation - find users by name.
7. Use Search field to find out who is tweeting about the topics you are interested in, or what your target followers will be interested in.
8. Search Google site:twitter.com/*/YOUR TAG – Eg. Site.twitter.com/*/sports
9. Use Justtweetit or Wefollow.
10. View the following/follower lists of the Twitter accounts you are following to see who they are following/who is following them.

Do you have any other ways to find people on Twitter?

Deciding who to follow on Twitter

ID chosen. Tick. Profile set up. Tick. Now what?  You have got this great Twitter profile, you might even have customised the page a little, chosen your own background, and added a photo (hopefully). Now what? 

You’ve got tonnes of stuff you want to say, but you are all alone with no followers.  We’ve all been there.  It can seem quite daunting deciding who to follow.... 

Twitter Follower or Twitter Leader?

We’ve all heard the saying “You may know a man by the company he keeps”. Not only is the same true on Twitter, but ignore it at your peril. 

Generally (as in life there are exceptions to the rule), if you have more followers than you are following you look like a leader, someone who is popular, someone who has something useful to say, therefore you look like someone who others should follow.  People with positive follower to following ratios generally tweet useful insightful relevant snippets regularly. They don’t just talk about themselves and they don’t try to sell something to you all the time. They are the one’s everyone ...

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT FREE!

Another point I’ve been thinking about after reading the “B2B Barometer” reports produced by the Institute of Direct Marketing and the Association of B2B Agencies. They noted that 86% of ‘client-side’ respondents expect their spending on social media to increase during the next 12 months.

Well that does not surprise me in the least! One of social media’s big hooks for businesses facing the prospect of a recession was that it was supposed to be ‘free’. That wasn’t strictly true. It was only free in the same way that a PR campaign is ‘free’. You might not have to pay a title to print your content but the costs of researching, developing, producing and distributing that content all have to be met. It can be a time-consuming task that requires a specialist skill set. Social media is exactly the same. Looks like businesses have just woken up to the fact that sometimes you have to pay to get lucky. No intentional reference to Wayne Rooney intended!