How to get more Twitter followers is a question often asked by regular users of the social networking platform and businesses that want to drive more people to their sites and products.
I do not profess to be an expert on the subject but thought I would provide my perspective about this topic after receiving this very question recently.
First off, I think we need to understand two things. 1, why would you want more Twitter followers and 2, what will you do with them when they arrive?
The answer to these can influence how you go about developing a strategy that accomplishes the goal.
Do you want to generate more traffic to your blog to increase your readers and build your personal brand or is this purely for building a network of friends?
I think one of the best things you can do is to simply be yourself and reach out to people with similar interest and be sociable. I don’t know that it needs to be any more complicated than that really.
My personal experience has been that this is a great way to organically grow your Twitter profile. I am absolutely not a fan of gadgets and gimmicks designed to bring you 1000 new followers in 48 hours or however some of these are structured to perform, as they just don’t seem natural or genuine.
Having never used any, I am not qualified to speak on their effectiveness but I can tell you that they are just not my thing.
When I received the question of how to get more followers, it dawned on me that in all of the articles I have written, I never wrote one on how to actually get more followers.
I suspect that I had not because there is no best or optimal way of doing this, it depends on many factors, a couple of which were listed above. I’m going to open this up for discussion in the comments below but before we get there let me make a couple of points.
We should understand that profiles (Twitter included) are really your personal websites and should be treated as such. You may not personally own the site, but it is your website to use.
So what do we want on our websites? We want helpful and useful information for the visitors that arrive. In the case of Twitter, which only allows 140 characters, the challenge is to deliver that information within the framework of that 140 character design.
This is why most Tweets contain a topic and a link to the broader body of information.
Since your Twitter profile is a part of YOUR image and brand, it needs to be protected and carefully cultivated. The last thing you want to do is generate a reputation as a spammer by using some of those mass follow techniques and such. The idea is that if you follow many, many will follow back.
Think about that. Do you really want to be seen as someone who blindly follows others? I think not. Also, many of these tactics may result in your profile being banned.
But does that strategy work? Of course it does as many users have auto-follow tools in use, but consider the quality of the relationship. There is none. This is simply an exercise in building numbers, not relationships.
I understand the motivation behind this (sell products/make money) but think it is a flawed and phony approach to marketing. Maybe I’m just old school but I think padding your follower count through automation tools like auto-follow and auto-DM just brings in the low-value followers, many of whom are running the same game.
The large follower count may be seen as “social proof” by many, but in reality, what is the true quality of that list?
If you have a list of 1500 similar-minded individuals who you have some form of relationship with, my guess is that this list would likely outperform a list of 5000 built on the scatter-shot approach of automation tools.
I say go for the slow and steady targeted growth method, at least for me, it is something that I can feel genuine about.
So what about you, what has your experiences with building a Twitter following been?
What are the methods you prefer or stay away from?
Please leave your responses below.
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