We all yearn for more followers on Twitter. Twitter has proven to be a great place to market and brand your blog in the past months. However, a lot of people don’t seem to be able to create a large enough audience to really effectively market their blog.
All of the “How to get Twitter followers” articles out there tell you the same stuff over and over again:
- Get a brandable username, an avatar that matches your personality, and a great custom Twitter design.
- Retweet great content you see
- Post great content on your blog and get it retweeted
- Create good discussions
- Tweet consistently useful information
Sure, that stuff might work, but it’s not foolproof by any means. I have read a plethora of articles that have helped me build my Twitter accounts, but none of those articles ever have suggested anything that I am about to write about in this article.
Earning > Receiving
The theme of this article is to earn your Twitter followers rather than just getting them handed to you. A common method that is used to get followers is just mass following a bunch of people.
If you have tried that method, the chances of it working for you are high. But ask yourself this, did you really earn those followers?
1. Write About Twitter
Throw out some Twitter articles on your blog every once in a while that is aimed at helping someone enhance their experience using the website. We have been doing it here this past week, and we have definitely seen the impact of writing about Twitter.
Right before I left for my vacation, I published an article titled “7 Simple Tips for Effectively Marketing Your Blog on Twitter.” It’s about Twitter, and it did pretty well while I was away.
Overall, the article received 24 comments without me replying to any comments and 32 retweets. The traffic it brought to this blog was pretty decent from just retweets:
I would even encourage you to get your community involved and have them share their Twitter with you. I did that here, and a lot of people got involved and shared their Twitter account with everyone else.
2. Have a Twitter Contest
Twitter has become a great place to hold a contest on your blog. Top bloggers like ShoeMoney and John Chow have used Twitter to hold contests with great prizes and as a result, they earned a bunch of new followers.
If you ever do hold a Twitter contest, be sure to keep the following in mind:
- Make sure you have people follow you and retweet a message with a BRIEF description and a SHORT URL to the contest.
- Use a tool like RetweetRadar to keep track of those who have retweeted your message.
- Offer a great prize, because you will need to offer a lot to get a lot of people to tweet about your contest.
Having a contest requires a large amount of effort, but if you use the proper tactics to get word out about your contest, you should see some real benefits.
3. Quoting Others
Quoting a popular saying or statement is a popular trend on Twitter, and is something that has great potential to bring in followers. You can either find a quote somewhere on the Internet, or you can simply retweet someone else.
It’s really just like tweeting a link over and over again. I can break the whole process down for you very easily:
- Find a quote and tweet about it
- Someone will see it, will include your username (RT @AlexFraiser [...]).
- All of their followers will see it, and if they like it, they will retweet it again with your username in it still.
- The process may or may not repeat many times, but the chances of getting even a few retweets is very high.
A quote is not just a great way to get retweeted, but if it you can find a quote that relates to the topic of the niche you tweet about, then you are still providing quality content to your readers AND marketing your Twitter name. Tell me that’s not a good deal!
4. Study the Power Users in your Niche
Whatever niche you’re in, there is someone who is going to be the best. Maybe that person is you, and maybe it’s not. Try to find these people who have thousands of followers and see what they have done to earn so many followers.
Once you have found those people, study their tweeting habits and try to apply some of them to your own tweeting routine. The key things to look for in a powerful Twitter user are usually:
- Time of day they tweet – The time of the day they tweet can really have a big impact on how many people get to see your tweet before it is pushed down by other tweets.
- Type of tweets - Figure out what they tweet about. Do they just tweet about what they are doing, or do they deliver great content? See if they post links a lot, and how they keep the ratio of linking and text steady.
- Interaction - How often do they interact with their followers? Look for the @replies in their stream and see what kind of conversations they create with their followers.
Of course you shouldn’t go out and copy what other people do. Just look at what you have learned from studying these power users and do your best to build off of their routine. You don’t find success through copying, you have to learn to build off of something and have it relate to you.
5. Use #hashtags and Optimize Keywords
Hot topics right now on Twitter
Believe it or not, you can optimize your tweets just like you can optimize a web page by doing a little keyword research. If you can find out a topic to tweet about and include a few popular keywords on Twitter, you should see some discussion being created.
By using hash tags, you can find out what’s hot and what’s not on Twitter. If there is a lot of discussion about a certain topic, then there is a lot of focus on that topic. If you get involved, some of that focus can be turned onto you.
Like any forum or blog you participate in, if you contribute enough to the discussion then you can become a trusted source of information. What happens when you create trust on Twitter? You get more followers!
6. Save your best tweets for Friday
You may or may not be aware of the trending topic that goes in every Friday on Twitter called #FollowFriday. Every Friday, many Twitter users recommend people to follow, and that usually results in people getting hundreds or thousands of extra followers every Friday.
So why should you save your best stuff for Friday? Dish out your best content on Fridays, and if someone who is participating in #FollowFriday sees you posting great stuff, they will be more inclined to include you in their recommendation list.
It makes more sense to save your best stuff for Friday then Monday. You may be great to some people, and they may want to recommend you on Friday. But if you post all your best content on any other day than Friday, your chances of getting that content seen for Follow Friday is decreased and people may forget to recommend you.
7. Create Incentives
People will be more likely to do something for you if you can offer them a reward for doing it. It is very easy to take advantage of that concept on Twitter and use it to rake in many followers.
One of the most popular incentive I see being used on Twitter goes something like this:
Help me reach 1k followers! I will give my 1,000th follower a special prize! Please RT!
That should spark some interests and get more people to start following you. The only problem with this trick is that the people following you may not be really interested in you, they just want that prize. That’s why you should give out a reward that is related to your niche, if who follows you is important to you.
Isn’t Being Clever Great?
If you can use the advice I have given you, then I really believe you will start to see more followers coming your way. I am always experimenting with new tricks to increase my follower count on both of the Twitter accounts I use, and I have used a couple of these with great success.
What tricks have you used on Twitter that you think are smarter than the average method? I would love to see what you come up with!
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Great article. There are some good tips here that I really need. My Twitter account is coming along though. I have over 1000 followers now.
Jake | Web Journey´s last blog ..Logo’s Are More Important Than You Think ( And You can a Free logo)
Thanks Jake! That’s great to hear your account is doing so well. How long do you think it will take to hit 2k?
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
i am so impressed alex! you are just 15 years of age and you wrote a good article here about twitter. nice job.
elmot´s last blog ..Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs: The Return of the Darth Vader
Thanks a lot elmot, appreciate it.
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
Hopefully not that long now. I keep getting new followers daily.
Jake | Web Journey´s last blog ..Logo’s Are More Important Than You Think ( Plus: A Free Logo)
Hey, Alex! Twitter is a fickle beast. I’m not quite sure what to think about it. You’re absolutely right about the Internet being saturated with “How to Increase Your Twitter Following” articles, yet, you still managed to make this one unique. I had never thought or read about saving good content for Fridays and holding contests for your followers. Nice job!
I did an experiment with Twitter Auto-DM’s a couple months ago. It was intended more to develop relationships with new followers than to increase my follower count. Here’s the link:
http://www.juniorbiz.com/juniorbiz-journey/47-twitter-to-auto-dm-or-not-to-auto-dm-jj-entry-12
I hope you don’t mind. You can delete it if you want.
Nick Tart | JuniorBiz´s last blog ..How to Network as a Young Entrepreneur: Online
That was my goal, glad you think I did well! This article actually took a good while to plan so it didn’t become like all of the other “How to get twitter followers.”
I’m going to check that out later when I start commenting on other blogs. Thanks for pointing that out Nick!
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
You’re only 15?!?! Amazing. Good article- I like the summary at the end. I’m a new Twitter-er, with a new blog that I want to bring traffic to… your suggestions are excellent. I have had ideas recently about writing a post on Twitter (just because it has instantly fascinated me), but didn’t realize that it might bring me more traffic. Makes perfect sense…
You have a new sub, thanks!
Karen´s last blog ..Blogging Blueprint Review
I will be 16 in 2 days if that counts for anything!
The great thing about writing about Twitter is that you don’t have to go over the top to get much attention.
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
I have had similiar experiene with my posts about Twitter, they seem to get retweeted much more often. They also do well on social bookmarking sites, especially Twittley.
Tycoon Blogger´s last blog ..Is Twittley better than Tweetmeme?
It’s true, good luck with your posts!
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
Great article Alex. Lot’s of important areas covered. RT for ya..
Roseli A. Bakar´s last blog ..EzyBlogger Blog Contest Winners
Appreciate the RT, thanks!
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
Creative strategies, like you thoughts about the type of tweet, the time to tweet. It actually affects.
Phaoloo´s last blog ..Find and Run Robot – The Cool Tool To Save Your Time When Find An Application To Run
Yes, you have to take time zones into account when you’re doing any kind of marketing!
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
For purely the sake of fun, I just like using Twitter as a sort of chatbox. Haha. random replies to random people, In the end, I gain new friends! You should try it. Its fun
Liane ´s last blog ..It’s Blogger Tag Time! Come On Join the Fun!
That’s how I started out using it, but then I discovered MSN Messenger.
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
I’ve been looking at the Twitter Contest option lately. I’ve never run a contest before and I’m enjoying looking at old ones and seeing what people did right.
I would like to run one some day.
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
Thanks for this advice!
I will try some of these ideas!
Cheers,
LS
chill music´s last blog ..Techno in der Sesamstraße
I always look forward to your posts. You didn’t disappoint as usual. I follow most of the tips you mentioned. But some of the things I haven’t tried yet. I’ll give them a try and increase my following at Twitter. Thanks for a great post.
HAVOC MARKETING´s last blog ..Google Magic Formula – Unscramble The Google Code
Thanks, that means a lot!
What were the things you were doing already?
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
Cool tips Alex. Its should be kept in mind that we have to save our best Tweets for friday..I often forget that.
Yes, Friday has to be without a doubt the day where most people are being followed.
Alex´s last blog ..Let Me Critique Your Thesis Customization – 30 Days Only
Twitter is good networking tool but i am very frosted of twitter services because without any notification twitter suspend my account
Suchmaschinen Marketing´s last blog ..Ludwig Boltzmann Institut – Projekt "LARRGE"
Great post.
Some great points you are making there.
I found out that people especially like quotes. Inspirational, motivational, etc.
~Igor
Mastermind Social Marketing´s last blog ..Why Is Respect So Important
Wow…What a great idea. Thanks for sharing the information Alex.
Hi Alex,
Great post. I like your point 6: save your best tweets for Friday
, you are right about the #FollowFriday. Today is Friday, I’m going to apply your idea just right now 
.
David | ilcantone.com´s last blog ..HOW TO OVERCOME YOUR FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING