1. Find Your Niche
When you start building out your Twitter profile, be sure to add your interests to your bio. You’ll have more success in finding people who share similar interests/activities. As an example, I’m a digital marketer who enjoys sports and movies, and my profile reflects that.
Therefore, you should self-assess yourself. Find out who you are, who you want to be, what you like to do, and what you want people to know about you. You’ll have greater results if you know your niche, so find it.
2. Post Personal Relevant Content
The content you post will be a reflection of your brand. If you’re posting about every possible subject, you may quickly realize that your Twitter following is starting to decrease. A majority of your followers have followed you because of a similarity. If your posts stop becoming relevant to your followers, then they’ll not need to stick around. Your posts should consistently reflect your interests. Building your brand will build your following.
3. Be Active
This is a key step in this process. Studies have shown that individuals who have tweeted less than 1000 times have 100 or fewer followers and those who have tweeted 10,000 times or more can have between 1,000 to 5,000 followers. The more you post, the bigger your following can become. If you start to have a slump in your Twitter activity, then followers will start to jump ship. I went on a cruise for a week, and once I logged back into my Twitter, I realized that I had lost a ton of followers! If I wasn’t posting content, then I wasn’t offering my followers any reason to stick around.
A Word of Caution
Now, there can be a fine line between actively tweeting and tweeting too much. I have gone through and unfollowed certain people because I quickly realized that not only were they clogging up my Twitter feed, but several times a day they had posted the same tweet, which turned out to be a sales pitch. After several dozen times of seeing the same photo week after week, I realized that enough was enough. They lost at least one follower that day. So have respect for your followers and actively post about things that can benefit them.
4. Engage, Follow, and Be Genuine
It may not be enough to just post relevant content all the time. To build your following you need to engage. Start favoriting or retweeting tweets that interest you and start following industry leaders or thought leaders. I have found that when I started following business or marketing experts, people started to follow me because of my content and similar interests.
Don’t be ashamed to follow too many people. Many thought leaders and experts that I follow are almost the same amount of people who follow them. When you’re in this process of favoriting, following, and messaging, you must be genuine in your actions. Many people that I followed had sent automated messages thanking me for the follow and to check out their blog or follow them on blah, blah, blah. It wasn’t genuine.
One individual, however, tweeted a question for me. It wasn’t an automated message in my inbox, but it was a personal tweet with a specific question for me. It caught me by total surprise and so I answered. He then tweeted back, favored my tweet, and not only gained my respect but also a dedicated Twitter follower. So remember to be genuine to the people who follow you, because they are actual people.
5. Join the #Hashtag Train
The final step in this building process is to incorporate hashtags with your posts. When you hashtag the topic of your post, you’re increasing your profile’s reach and giving the reader a better understanding of your post. A #hashtag can add your post to searches related to that topic and can go a long way in building your following. But again, be realistic with your hashtags and don’t stuff your post full of them. A follower doesn’t want to see a post filled with, “#ContentMarketing #DigitalMarketing #SocialMedia #Bloggers #Facebook #Krypton #TeamStark” and no actual tweet. Hashtag what your post is about, but be conservative. Respect the #Hashtag.
A Twitter following doesn’t build overnight, but with a few of these steps, you can start building your following by at least 100 followers a week. I know it works because it’s been working for me.
Do you have a Twitter? Drop it below along with your niche so we can follow along.
Much success,
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