If you have decided to use Twitter for business, you probably know Twitter is all about the relationships you will build with your followers and the influence you will get over time. Your strategy should include a solid plan to steadily increase followers on Twitter.
Some spammers think influence comes from the large number of followers they have compared to the small number of friends they follow. They create applications and deploy artificial means to quickly increase the users they follow on Twitter and then unfollow as soon as users follow back. They believe the imbalance this creates will make them look like celebrities.
Perhaps some unsophisticated potential followers do judge people they meet on Twitter by this sort of unbalanced ratio, but most tweeps understand that it isn’t about the number of followers. Your Twitter influence is all about the tweets you send and whether your followers actually read and react to them.
Cautions As You Increase Followers on Twitter
Don’t add friends too fast
Twitter will shut down your account if you try to add too many friends (tweeps you follow) each day. Some say this happens when you add more than a hundred new friends a day. Personally, I would keep it under fifty new followers a day to stay well beneath Twitter radar.
Don’t add too many more than are following you
#2001 is a magic friend number on Twitter because after that Twitter may stop letting you add new friends. You can read about Twitter friend/follower ratio rules here.
It can be hard to convince several hundred tweeps to follow you back all at once, so many tweeps who increase followers on Twitter too quickly end up doing a mass friend dump to bring things in line when they hit 2001. This can annoy some of the friends you were following, especially if you add them back a few weeks later.
It is better to add and unfollow gradually over time and keep things in balance as you grow your following. Besides, if you are adding too many friends, you will not be able to build the relationships that lead followers to read your tweets without sacrificing time you should spend writing.
Where can you find new friends and followers?
Increase Followers on Twitter by Searching a Keyword
If you go on Twitter and search by a keyword critical to your business you will get back a list of the latest tweets containing that keyword. You can use this in two ways.
- You can check out user profiles to see if these are tweeps you want to follow.
- You can answer questions and point tweeps to important resources.
Find followers on other tweeps’ lists
Many people use lists to manage all their friends on Twitter. For example, blogger D. A. Schweiss segregates his friends into lists of pointy-ears, blogger-writers, etc. When looking for friends to follow, you can looks at the lists of a quality tweep you already follow to find more friends with similar interests.
As a writer, you might look at the writer or editor lists of some of your friends. You can also follow a list in its entirety to increase the tweets you see without increasing your total friend count. Just click on the list and the choose “Follow this list.” This is a great strategy for evaluating over time which tweeps are worth following before adding them.
Find friends on third party apps
You can also look for new friends in Twitter lists on third party applications like Twibes and Twellow. Twitter users sign up to be listed under keyword categories which you can search to find new tweeps to follow. While you are there you should also sign up to help interested followers find you.
Writer Wednesday and Follow Friday
Twitter has a recommendation frenzy every Friday where tweeps recommend each other to their followers. On a slighter smaller scale, writers also recommend each other on Wednesdays. Actually, this practice has grown to stretch out all week it seems, and you can see messages with the #FF or #WW hashtag any day of the week.
I find these events most likely to increase my followers on Twitter when I retweet a recommendation that includes myself and then follow the others who were mentioned in the same tweet. That way potential followers will see me three times:
- In the original tweet
- As a person who re-sent the tweet
- As a new follower
This leads to a high percentage of these new friends converting to followers.
Choose Your Twitter Friends Wisely
Look at tweet streams before you follow
Tweeps hate when you follow them and then immediately unfollow them once they follow back. And while this is associated with aggressive adding strategies, I think it also happens when people blindly add a bunch of friends and then later decide they don’t like the tweets they are seeing. Taking a minute to view a potential friend’s tweet stream before you follow or follow back will help you build a quality tweet stream and follower network without jeapordizing your Twitter karma.
These are my Twitter strategies that help me find friends that will become followers. What are you strategies? Do you have any Twitter challenges you would like me to address in future posts? Please comment with any tips or questions.
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Hello, Tammi!
Great post about follow strategies for Twitter. I’ve been using Twitter more for social interaction and casual networking, so I tend to follow people who interact with their followers. If someone just tweets links and random quotes, I find that very boring.
As you demonstrated in your post, I uses lists to make it easier to group the people that I follow, such as my Writers and Bloggers list, my Must Read list, and my Geeks list. I love being included in lists, so lists are an easy way to spread some love to the people you follow, too.
In addition to public lists, I also use private lists to catch up on tweets from my favorite people to follow. You have to adopt a strategy like this eventually because once you follow 300+ people, your Twitter stream fills up too quickly to keep up with everyone. Other things to consider are the use of Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck and HootSuite, where you can build columns based on lists or search terms, so that you don’t miss useful tweets from your favorite people to follow.
Again, great post! And thank you for including me as an example.
Regards,
Dieter
(@QuietRumbling)
D.A. Schweiss´s last [type] ..YouTube Finds – I Know- You Know
You’re welcome, Dieter. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience.
What are your strategies?
Connect your networking- it’s easy to get followers if your FB friends and LinkedIn friends are on Twitter. Be sure to link all of your networking efforts.
Do you have any Twitter challenges you would like me to address in future posts?
It’s extremely hard for me to do the daily challenges every week, but, it would be helpful to come up with some sort of guide to engaging your twitter followers- like the 30 day blogging one. What do you think Tammi? Up for the challenge?
That’s an awesome idea, Leah. I have to go offline for a few days, but I will rough out a 30 day program while I am MIA.
Great article! A lot of helpful tips and information!
Thanks for stopping by, Scott. I am glad you enjoyed.