Remember when there was a period of time when it looked like Twitter was dying? Well, it appears as though Twitter is back and continues to grow. This means it’s still a viable channel for your business and it’s still important to look at ways to get more Twitter followers.
We put together this list of proven and actionable ways for you to get more Twitter followers in 2019. Some are tried and true methods that you may already be familiar with, others are strategies you may have not considered yet. Either way, set aside some time, and start implementing these tips into your Twitter marketing strategy.
1. Optimize your profile for more followers
The first way is to ensure you’re setting up your Twitter profile to get more followers. If your Twitter profile isn’t set up to get more followers, the other methods in this article won’t be as effective. These are some of the fundamental things you should be doing:
A great profile picture
This seems like common sense but having a good profile picture is important. When you appear in searches or as a follower in someone’s notifications, it’s often the profile picture that will pique their curiosity to get them to click over to your profile to learn more about you.
A detailed bio
Your bio, in a few short words, should tell potential followers who you are, what you’re about, and even what you like to Tweet about. This is your elevator pitch to get people to follow you.
Add a location
This is often neglected but ensure you put a location for your profile so your profile appears in relevant searches.
Use a pinned Tweet to encourage followers
Your pinned Tweet is your opportunity to highlight the best and most interesting content you share. It’s also where you can make another pitch for people to follow you. “Follow me and get the latest news on Google Algorithm updates and how it affects you and your business”.
Verification
Getting verified on Twitter isn’t easy or always possible. But if you’re serious about it, a Verification Badge can go a long way in getting more people to follow you. You can learn more about Twitter’s verification process on their website.
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2. Tweet frequently and schedule your content
Nobody wants to follow a Twitter profile that isn’t active. At the same time, nobody wants to follow a Twitter profile that is spamming their feed. There’s a fine balance here, but your profile should appear more active than not.
To help with this, it’s a good idea to use a tool that allows you to schedule content on Twitter ahead of time. We like and use Crowdfire but there are alternatives such as Buffer and Hootsuite.
A good frequency on Twitter is around 3 Tweets a day. You’ll want to ensure you’re spacing out your content throughout the day as well as mixing up your content. Tweet photos, videos, links, quotes, single lines of text, paragraphs, etc. Make your feed interesting, not just filled.
3. Post at the right time
According to Sprout Social, the best time to post on Twitter is Wednesday and Friday at 9am, with Tuesday and Wednesday being the best days to post on Twitter overall. This comes from their data looking at when on Twitter they were seeing the most engagement.
Ideally, you’re posting on Twitter when you’re more likely to get the most engagement. The more engagement you get, such as Likes and Retweets, the more likely you will get more followers on Twitter as a result. The more people that engage with your content, the more people that are not followers see it.
4. Ride the trend and hashtag waves
Twitter, perhaps more than any other social network other than Instagram, is where you can find the trending topics and hashtags of the day and inject yourself into those conversations.
Use the hashtags, current events, and happenings within the Twitterverse to gain more exposure to your Twitter profile.
There won’t always be a relevant trend everyday that will make sense to inject yourself or brand into but if you make a routine of checking everyday, you’ll find opportunities. This can be as simple as talking and replying to the users talking about the event or trend, or even Tweeting about it yourself.
5. Monitor and engage
If you have some brand recognition and brand affinity, you’ll definitely want to monitor your brand mentions on social media. People may not always tag you in the conversations they’re having about you.
If you’re not a well recognized brand or person yet, you can monitor keywords instead. BrandMentions, RiteTag, and Brand24 are a few tools you can use to monitor keywords and your brand.
6. Engage and reply to influencers
You can leverage the large audiences that influencers and brands in your niche and industry have by engaging with them and replying to them.
When influencers Tweet out to their millions of followers, you can appear in their Reply feed whenever you engage with them, allowing their followers to see your response and profile.
Find the influencers that might share your audience and engage with them.
7. Follow the followers of your competitors
If you want to grow your Twitter following, you can put in the work to grow it slowly. Take 10 minutes every day to follow and engage with the followers of your competitors or Twitter profiles that share your audience.
For example, if I was trying to grow the Pepsi Twitter account, I would click over to see Coca-Cola’s followers and follow 50 of them and maybe like each of those follower’s latest Tweet.
The hope is that a small portion of the users that I follow everyday follow back because I’m a related and relevant brand they might like.
Inevitably what will end up happening is that I will end up with a much higher Following to Follower ratio. After 3 days of following someone, if they don’t follow back, I should unfollow them.
Tweepi is one tool that allows you to partially automate this process safely. Tweepi allows you to see who hasn’t followed you back after a certain number of days and unfollow them.
With this routine, you can expect around 1 out of 5 people to follow you back. This is manual work and a little time consuming, but it’s one of the more proven ways to get more Twitter followers.
8. Tag real people in your Tweets
We all know that we should be using relevant hashtags in our Tweets but what about tagging relevant people and brands?
One way to do this is to Quote Retweet the thought leaders and influencers in your niche or industry.
You can also simply tag relevant influencers when you’re sharing an article that’s relevant to them. Even if they don’t engage with your Tweets, their followers and people that search for them will see that appear in a feed that shows who’s talking about them.
9. Upload your email subscribers and follow them
Instead of getting your customers to find you, go out and find your customers.
Twitter allows you to upload a list of contacts to find people to follow. Use this to upload your email list of subscribers or customers to Twitter and find the customers that aren’t following you yet on Twitter and have a Twitter profile.
This is a good way to Tweet your customers as well. You can send them a nice message here letting them know you’re on Twitter and available if they need any help.
10. Host a Twitter chat
Twitter chats are special events run by brands on Twitter in where they bring together a few influencers or experts in an industry, and ask them a series of questions on Twitter. The idea is to spark a discussion or “chat” among their followers and the rest of Twitter around a particular topic.
An example of this is if you were a brand that sold computer parts and had experts in the industry answer a series of questions on Twitter about the best parts to build a gaming computer.
To set a chat up, you’d need to schedule the date ahead of time, find and reach out to experts in your industry asking them to participate, make the announcement on Twitter, and get the participants to Tweet it out to their followers.
11. Add people to public Twitter lists
Twitter lists are still a thing, even if you may have never used them before!
Twitter allows you to create public Twitter Lists and add Twitter users to them. When they’re added to the List, they receive a notification.
You can be cheeky here and create lists with names such as “We Tweet about X” or flattering such as “Best Twitter users on X”. But your best bet is to use this as an additional strategy to the following your competitor’s followers strategy mentioned earlier.
12. Test Promoted Tweets
Twitter’s Promoted Tweets is one of the most underused and under appreciated paid channels. When done right, you can create a seamless Tweet that receives a lot of engagements and followers from users.
The trick here is to create a Tweet that appears as though it would be from someone that the people you’re targeting would be following. Ideally, when someone’s scrolling through their feed, the Tweet should stand out but also not appear as an ad, so that you’re more likely to get engagement.
Tweeting questions seems to get a pretty high response, especially if it’s a little opinionated or tends to divide people. For example, questions such as “iPhone or Android, which is better?” or “Let’s settle the debate, should people be able to hide their identities online?” are ways to spark engagement on your paid Tweets and drive down CPMs.
13. Use your website Website
If you have a website, you have real estate to promote your social media profiles to your visitors. You already know the benefits of owning a website or blog, but it’s also a way to build audiences on other platforms. Here’s a few ways to make the most of your website to get more Twitter followers.
Embed your Twitter feed
Embed your Twitter feed on the sidebar of your blog or somewhere on your website that will get some visibility among your visitors.
Link to your Twitter profile
If you aren’t already, ensure you’re linking out to all your social media profiles on your website. You can either do this in the footer of your website or on your “about” page that you may have.
Email your audience
If you’re building an email list, that’s an audience you can tap into to grow your social media profiles. Either ensure you’re including links to your social media profiles in every email you send out, or even craft an email for your subscribers specifically asking them to follow you.
Go out and get more followers
Growing a Twitter following isn’t just about creating content to Tweet out and making the time to schedule and post Tweets. It’s about setting aside time to work to build an audience on Twitter.
Some of it requires some manual work but a lot of it simply requires a strategy and consistency. Just like all other social media platforms, consistency is the key.
