People who are new to Twitter sometimes ask me "How can I get more followers?" The quickest way: Follow enough people, and a good percentage of them will follow you back. But the "follow you, follow me" method is flawed. If you start following several hundred people and keep adding more until you reach 2,000 then 3,000 and so on, it becomes too time consuming to vet the people you choose to follow. Before you know it, you'll be following anyone and everyone, including people who aren't relevant to you or your business. You'll follow tweeters who push their messages without ever engaging in conversations. You won't notice that you're following spammers—but what the heck? They're following you back! And your raw score (i.e., your total number of followers) is increasing!
Following junk Twitter users can hurt your reputation. Remember that other Twitterers can see not only how many people follow you, but how many you follow and who they are. Influential Twitter users (the kind you actually want to follow you) will often check who you follow before deciding follow you. If you're loaded up with junk, they'll may pass you up.
A much better way to increase your follower count on Twitter is "naturally," by which I mean through sincere actions—without spamming, without bulk-following, by acting like a real human being. These 15 simple tips will help you attract more followers, probably at a slower rate than the "follow you, follow me" route, but the results will last in the long term and your reputation will remain solid.
1. Make your Twitter presence visible. Link to your Twitter account from Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and your blog, as well as in your business and personal email signatures, depending on whom you want to reach. How else will your friends and close contacts know to follow you? If you're tweeting for a business, do include the link in your personal accounts because, believe it or not, your friends and family are curious about your work life. Don't necessarily link your personal Twitter account to your work profiles and signatures, though. Make sure youcreate an active hyperlink and not just flat text.
2. Show your face. Uploading a photo that shows your face can result inten times as many followers. Don't you want to know the real person behind the Twitter accounts you follow? Other people do, too. It helps if you're smiling (shamefully,my Twitter profile picture fails the smile test).
3. Name your area of expertise or interest in your bio. If you want more Twitter followers, you have to give people a reason to follow you. You need a theme, such as an area of expertise or interest. Succinctly name that theme in your Twitter bio.
4. Tweet on topic 80 percent of the time. You can (and should) go off topic from time to time to let your followers know you're a real person, but stick to your theme in 80 percent of your tweets in order to deliver on the promise you've made in your profile.
5. Give a city name. Name your city or region in your profile. That way, if you discuss local issues, businesses, or events, people know where you are. If you're tweeting as a business, including your location is essential. Even if you link to your complete business website with an address, you still need to name your city on your profile.
6. Add value. The real idea behind this point is don't post garbage. To build your reputation on Twitter, you and your posts need to add value. You have to give people something they won't find elsewhere. Value can't be measured objectively, so you have to think about what's valuable—interesting, compelling, humorous, helpful, informative—to your followers based on your theme. Let's say you tweet about technology. Rather than post the make and model of your computer, share where you bought it and the price you paid, or how you upgraded it. If you tweet about sailing, don't just report the weather but explain how the conditions will affect your route or gear. The more you add context, information, advice, and smart analysis, the more people will see you and your tweets as adding value. Twitter has several inherent ways for users to get more followers (explained further in this article), but none of them work if you aren't adding value and posting relevant content.
7. Use theme hashtags. One way new Twitter followers might find you is by searching for a term or hashtag. Hashtags are the "pound" (#) symbol ("hash" is the British English name for it) that precede a word or string of words in Twitter. If your theme is marketing, include "#marketing" in some of your tweets and anyone searching for that term will see your posts. Whatever keywords relate to your theme, turn them into hashtags. Don't use a hashtag every single time you tweet. Reserve the hashtags for your best content (say, top 10 to 25 percent) of the 80 percent of tweets that are on topic. For multi-word terms, eliminate the spaces. Seehashtags.org for some examples.
8. Jump on trending hashtags. When a hashtag is "trending" in Twitter, it means a lot of people are tweeting with that term. You can find trending hashtags under Trends in the right pane. When you click one, you'll see what all Twitter users have posted with that hashtag—not just the people you follow. When there's one that fits your topic of interest, it's a great opportunity to say something witty or insightful. People interested in that topic will see your tweet and will be enticed to hear what else you have to say. Additionally, some conferences and events will designate a hashtag for attendees. Use it! The people who read these posts already have a shared interest with you, and if they like what you have to say, they'll follow you.
9. Strategically follow new people through hashtags. Despite my whole song and dance about why "follow you, follow me" doesn't work, there is value in following people you don't know. But you need a good rationale for whom you add. Take the advice from nos. 6 and 7 and reverse it so that you're the one looking for tweets with relevant hashtags. When you find people you like, follow them. But don't go overboard. And unfollow anyone who doesn't tweet relevantly and often because every person you follow should count. When you start filling up your Twitter following list with duds, it weakens both your overall Twitter experience and your reputation. . Many of these people will follow you back, especially if they can see from your profile and history of tweets that you share an interest.
10. Strategically follow new people through searches. Another way to find relevant content, and therefore relevant people to follow, is to search more generally without getting into hashtags. Enter words that relate to your theme in the search bar at the top of Twitter. Comb through the resulting tweets and, as with point 8, follow people who seem relevant, and some will follow you back.
11. Follow FOFs (friends of friends). One last way that I strategically find new people to follow (and many of whom follow me back) is to look at the "following" list of my friends and people I respect. This tactic works especially well used on people with notoriety who follow fewer than 100 or so tweeters. For example, if I hold Jane Smith in high regard, and I see that she only follows 52 people, and (after a quick glance at a couple of profiles) I see that the people she follows have the same shared interest as Jane and me, then I can reasonably assume (until proven otherwise) that Jane is following some top-notch people. Sometimes, a person of minor celebrity in your industry or area of interest only follows personal friends who don't necessarily share that interest, too. When that's the case, it's usually very obvious off the bat from their names and the tweets they write. But very often, you can find absolute gem Twitter users this way.
12. Tweet at people on Friday #FF. Tweeting at people gets their attention and makes them notice you. Twitter has a weekly tradition called Follow Friday. It's nothing more than a shoutout. People take a moment on Fridays to recognize Twitter users they like or find relevant or whom they are newly following. There aren't too many rules about Follow Friday except to use the hashtags #FollowFriday or just #FF and list the people you want to call attention to with the @ symbol in front of their names (which ensures they receive an alert letting them know someone mentioned them). Follow Friday shout outs are flattering, but more importantly, they result in more followers. If you give a shout out, the people you mention will often start following you. If you get a #FF mention, people who follow the original tweeter will see that you're a respected and interesting person and will follow you, too.
13. Engage with @s. Another way to get people's attention is to engage with them. Use @s to ask questions, respond to things others have asked, comment when people post their opinions, and so on. Engage with people (sincerely, responsibly, and respectfully, of course), and they'll often follow you. Also use @s to flag someone when you post a link to content that you think they'd like. Be careful, though. Targeted messaging will be seen as spam if not done with sincerity.
14. Compliment people. Flattery will get you everywhere. Say nice things to people (by using the @ symbol before their name). Compliment their insight, courage, wit, or sense of humor. Being nice online goes a long way, especially on Twitter. It usually earns you some respect, too. And if you want to grow your Twitter followers over the longer term, without spamming tactics, people have to respect you. You don't have to say much: "Great article! Thanks for sharing." "Darling photo!" "Your profile made me laugh. Love it." Over the course of a week, try complimenting 10 to 20 people whom you follow but don't follow you back and see what happens. It's magical (even when it's a little cheesy).
15. Write something uplifting, encouraging, or motivational. Here's another feel-good experiment: Write something uplifting, encouraging, or motivational. Don't force it, but the next time you have a really positive moment or feel a strong sense of self-confidence, share it on Twitter. For me, those are the tweets that tend to get retweeted (RT) the most. Similar to getting a #FF shoutout, when someone RTs you, they make your name known to all their followers, which can be thousands of people, and some of them will likely follow you after reading your post.
