image credit: luc legay
It seems as though everybody is trying to leverage on Twitter nowadays, or at least that’s how it appears, considering just how many times people ask me how they can get more Twitter followers. While there are many things you can do, I’ve gone ahead and compiled a list of what I consider to be the 8 most important things you need to do if you want to get more followers.
Rather than elaborate any further, here are the 8 ways which I consider to be the best:
1. Link It Up!
You need to link to your Twitter profile from every conceivable place where you have an online presence, such as Digg, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, forum signature, and even in your e-mail signature. Also, if you have a blog, you can provide a link or a button which visitors can click in order to follow you on Twitter.
TIP: A huge collection of free Twitter icons and buttons can be downloaded here.
2. Get People to Retweet (RT) Your Tweet
Not everybody is aware of the fact that they can “retweet” so you need to take it upon yourself to explain to your followers that it can be done, and you need to encourage them to do it, simply because it’s extremely beneficial to your personal brand on Twitter. The more people you have retweeting your tweets, the more places your name will show up, and the more followers you stand to gain.
One effective way to get people to retweet your tweet is to simply, ask! It’s as easy as saying, “Please RT” at the end of your tweet. It has been proven statistically to increase retweets! Just don’t overdo it.
3. Branding
The very first thing you need to do once you sign up for a Twitter account, is you need to upload your photo. In fact, I find it almost unbelievable that so many people simply continue using the default Twitter icon rather than their own personal photo. It’s a well known fact that people tend to have greater trust in you if there’s a face to your tweets. Furthermore, even though you don’t need to be extravagant, you should always add a custom background to your Twitter homepage rather than using the default background.
TIP: You can customize and download free Twitter backgrounds here.
Additionally, your bio is there for a reason, so use it. The bottom line is, your recent tweets and replies are meaningless to others if they don’t know you, and your bio is the only way for you to introduce yourself to others. Leaving it blank will tend to discourage people from becoming a follower.
4. Provide Value
If you’re tweeting simply for the fun of it then this doesn’t apply, but if you want to increase your Twitter influence then you need to give your followers something of value. Value can be described as when you provide something useful to people such as information, interesting links, news, education, inspiration, wisdom, etc.
Generally speaking, it’s much the same as when you try to grow your blog. If people stand to gain by what you’re offering them, they will be more likely to add your name and become a follower. That’s not to say you can’t ever have any light-hearted fun, but if that’s all you do, then even though you may get followers, it’s likely they won’t be following you for long.
5. Display Your Recent Tweets
If you have your own website or blog, then you should definitely use it to your advantage with regards to promoting your Twitter profile. You can do this by using a special Twitter badge (shown on sidebar) or widget which will allow people to view your latest tweets.
6. Add Yourself to Twitter Directories
Just as you need to get a personal website listed in directories in order to attract traffic, you also need to get your Twitter profile listed in directories. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to do. Even though this won’t generate a sudden avalanche of followers, it does help in the long term. Here’s a short list of Twitter directories to get you started:
7. Tweet Regularly
Obviously if you only to tweet once in a blue moon then surely you cannot expect to get many followers. Ideally you need to tweet as often as possible even though it can be time consuming. Also, when I say you need to tweet often, I don’t mean once or twice a week, but instead, I mean a few times each day. And remember to post quality content because you want to provide value as mentioned in tip #4 in order to maximize your visibility.
8. Show Some Love!
One way for you to get the message across to show that you really do appreciate your followers, is by offering them a free gift such as a quality ebook. You could also offer a gift to those who are willing to retweet a message when you ask them. When the message gets retweeted along with your Twitter username, you’ll be notified via your tweet mentions. Once you have received this verification, you can then send them a Twitter direct message along with the download link to the ebook.
Which of these are the most effective ways to get more followers? What do you do to get more followers? Please comment below.
Best,
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, please follow me on Twitter and retweet this post using the link provided below.
Tweet This Post!Enjoy this post? Subscribe to get updates via RSS Feed or email and get a FREE Special Report!
"Resell Rights Profits Exposed!"
Click Here To Subscribe14 comments
Thanks for the great article.
As per your tip, signed up on http://www.MyTwitterDirectory.com
and already start receiving some quality followers. Thanks for suggesting this brilliant and simple twitter directory.
You’re welcome, Sara. I’m glad you were able to gain some quality followers so quickly! The best part is it only takes less than 5 minutes to add yourself to each directory.
Well a few things : 1 – People on FB seem to hate being asked to follow someone on twitter. I have promoted my twitter account everywhere using ping but FB people seemed to be annoyed at that.
Also Twitter is reworking the “retweet” so that will listed below and not as valuable.
finally the free gift — I have seen this before and just consider the free ebook more spam – with that said I have downloaded some Ebook gifts so maybe its still something people like.
Over all good advice and I think it’s better then the black hat methods of adding crappy followers.
Thanks Luke for your insightful comment.
I understand the frustration when asking people to follow you on Facebook. Not everyone on FB has a Twitter account, so perhaps that is why they’re annoyed. I recommend just leaving a link on FB for them to follow you – it’s less intrusive.
You’re right, Twitter is revamping the “retweet” feature in the next couple weeks. It might function and look a little different, but the benefits are still there, so I encourage everyone to practice getting retweeted frequently.
And about the free gift dilemma… My advice is that, if you’re sending them a free gift, make sure it’s of high quality. And don’t use auto DMs to send everyone who follows you a free gift. There is nothing special about that and your followers may get annoyed.
Your right on the auto DM free gifts – If they made it high quality and it was not automated people would respond to that.
I have only had a good experience being re tweeting and re tweeting – I hope it stays that way with their reworking.
Finally on the FB – I will test out leaving a link and not just asking the to follow me.Also saying something like I am also on twitter and you can follow me there as well. FB people seem picky – handle with kid gloves.
Still the best way I’ve found to get high quality traffic is to search Twitter for non-hashtag keywords in your niche and follow people in real-time. This accomplishes a couple of things:
1. You know they are active Twitter users
2. You know they tweet about your niche (at least right now)
3. They will often follow back immediately, which is a great time to start a conversation or offer a gift.
I have the following strategy: I have a little agreement with some other Twitter users. We retweet everything of each other. So people see this and the possibility of a retweet of an other person is higher. In some cases this worked really good and we could spread the massage.
Sounds like a good strategy, Pawel. However, the key here is not to overdo it. Your followers and your friends followers will notice the trend overtime and they may just ignore those retweets all-together.
The imporant things to do that you’ve shared, really lend a hand. The 8 ways which I consider to be the best. Thanks a lot and it really helped.
Quality post, I’m just getting started with Twitter and this will definitely help. Thanks Tom!
Hi Tom,
Nice summary. I have to ask you, on the Twitter directories, they ask to connect to you on Twitter, to be exact, as you know, it reads, “An application would like to connect to your account
The application WeFollow by WeFollow would like the ability to access and update your data on Twitter.”….I feel funny allowing someone else to update my data (not that Twitter itself couldn’t do what it pleased with my data or to my data but I digress). Can you please explain what exactly those apps do because you have to disclose your password to them? Thanks so much!
Farnoosh
Hi Farnoosh, That’s a good question. You’re not giving away your name and password to those applications (including directories). You are signing in through Twitter OAuth which is the safer way because you’re not revealing your name and password to the application owner. More about Twitter OAuth here.
And as for “accessing your data,” the application is trying to look up the number of followers and followings that you have, so they can display that information on their directory. Then that information is automatically updated on their site. If at anytime you no longer need their service, you can always revoke their access in your Twitter -> Settings -> Connections tab.
Hope that answers your questions.
I also use to look for the ways to increase my twitter followers list. And here I got the one with your blog post.
In regards to the posted by Luke, I think that a lot of people either use facebook OR twitter but not so much both…
Facebook has status updates, which I think is enough for most people to handle…!