10 Innovative Ways To Get A Huge Twitter Following
If you don’t think Twitter is absolutely essential to growing your business or brand, think again. Here is a staggering statistic. During this year’s Oscars telecast, 11.2 million tweets rolled in from 2.8 million unique users, according to Social Guide—a 75 percent increase from last year’s activity. In the world of social media sharing and Twitter, you can’t discount the fact that people around the globe ages 18–49 are tweeting! Ellen DeGeneres’ snapped a selfie with Meryl Streep and as followers re-tweeted the image more than two million times, the micro-blogging platform actually crashed. While it’s highly unlikely that we can all copy-cat Ellen and expect our tweets to be re-tweeted two million times––the point is, the larger Twitter following we have the more we can expect to watch our business grow and keep up with the trends! Check out these 10 innovative ways to get a large Twitter following and with a little time, luck, and creativity, going “viral” is just on the horizon.
One: Search Your Databases.
Search your database or, as I like to refer to it, use a process called “housekeeping.” When scrubbing away at say the kitchen sink, you wouldn’t want to leave any grime, same goes for your database. You want to be thorough and uncover as many new contacts as possible. The process might be a little painstaking at first, but start with your shopping cart buying list. You’ll be able to find Twitter usernames simply with customer’s first and last name and their email addresses. If you are not able to locate them this way, usually customers will put in a company name or website in which you can Google and find their Twitter handle from their site. Invite them to follow you and in turn reciprocate the favor by following them.
Two: Search Your Brand Name and Add Followers.
Finding conversations about your brand is a simple way of adding Twitter followers. Check out these effective and easy-to-use tools to help you find out what people are tweeting about your brand:
TwitterSearch: This is the official Twitter search page. Enter your brand name to search for conversations.
TweetBeep: This service sends you e-mail alerts whenever a twitterer mentions your keyword, brand, or URL.
Social mention: Receive free daily e-mail alerts of mentions of your brand, company, CEO, or marketing campaign, or on a developing news story or a competitor.
BackTweets: With this service, find out how many people are tweeting a given URL, which you can use to track your business’ URL.
Three: Follow Leaders and Join Conversations.
Finding influential leaders in your industry is simple using Klout.com, Peerindex.com, and WeFollow.com. Spotting leaders in your industry will open many doors to increasing your following. Start following them and post interesting content and by joining in on conversations people will take notice and start following you back. Commenting on popular hashtags and posting relevant @replies is the name of the game. Capitalizing on other people’s influence will prove to be helpful.
Four: Blog Commenting––Use Twitter and Blogging Together.
Actively blogging is a great way to engage with customers and interact. Always include “Follow me on Twitter (include handle) and tell me what you think” in your blog posts and or your sidebar Follow Me button. Doing this will drive traffic to your blog and your site.
Five: Add Social Media Buttons.
Social Media buttons serve to promote your business’ presence by generating new followers. By placing these buttons on your business’ website, you can help to create visibility for your social media accounts and easily extend your reach there. Follow Us, Like Us, etc. will expand the reach of your content to new audiences and generate new visitors back to your website. You should add social media sharing links/buttons to every piece of content you create, including landing pages, web pages, individual blog articles, email content, etc.
Six: Host a Twitter Contest.
Hosting a Twitter contest is a great way to increase brand engagement, build buzz, and create a larger following. Followers will typically be willing to enter a contest if they already like your brand in exchange for a chance to win awesome products or services. Twitter has its own guidelines for contests that you may want to check out before you get started.
Seven: Re-tweet Often.
Re-tweeting is probably one of the most successful strategies for growing your Twitter following. When you share someone else’s tweet with your followers, it endorses that other person and provides relevant and useful content to your followers. Refer to step three where we discussed the power of following influential people in your industry. By re-tweeting content from well-respected sources, you demonstrate to your audience that you know what’s going on in your industry, you respect their time, and you are only providing useful and helpful content. Note: re-tweeting useless, irrelevant content is a weapon of mass destruction––there is no other sure fire way of losing your audience when you carelessly re-tweet irrelevant content.
Seeing that re-tweeting is so important, consider these 10 tips:
- Keep your character count between 70-100 characters
- Re-tweet relevant tweets
- Be choosy in what you share
- Avoid being monotonous.
- Review other people’s re-tweets
- Know what days/time your target audience is most active
- Use URL shorteners to give your followers more characters to customize (Bit.ly is a great resource)
- Using the word please goes along way
- Talk directly to your audience
- Don’t be afraid to ask for a re-tweet!
Eight: Schedule Your Tweets.
Scheduling your tweets in advance helps you maintain a consistent flow of content, while saving time. Twitter users who utilize low-cost or free tools such as HootSuite tend to see more engagement and followers.
Nine: Tweet inspirational quotes.
People love reading quotes and they are really easy and fun to share with others. Inspirational quotes create engagement and are easy to post with the use of Forismatic, an online collection of quotes that you can post to Twitter instantly.
Ten: Use Sponsored Tweets.
With a little elbow grease and following the above tips, your Twitter following will be on fire, but if you feel the need to take it to the next level, you can use sponsored tweets. Sponsored Tweets is a Twitter advertising platform that connects advertisers with tweeters. The site provides robust targeting and detailed analytics for a price. Depending on your needs, you can spend anywhere from a few dollars to a couple grand.
Creating a large Twitter following simply takes work and time. Make it a priority to generate and search for content and implement these methods as shortcuts to getting where you want to be. Set a goal: do you want 100 followers or 5,000 followers? Here’s some simple math. 100 followers = 1,000 tweets. 1,000 followers = 10,000 tweets. 5,000 followers = 50,000 tweets and you get the point. Knowing what you have to do to get where you want to be is essential in creating a realistic goal. Work diligently, but also measure your success. What tools work best for you, what tools aren’t working? Keep your expectations reasonable and attainable.
