It is difficult to be noticed on Twitter because it has 313 million monthly active users.
If you don’t have many followers, it can be especially difficult to make your voice heard in your industry. Having more followers means having more influence, and shows that people are interested in what you have to say.
Besides Twitter, other social media networks are also popular for engaging audiences. According to the Sprout Social Index 2021, 50% of social consumers use Twitter daily and 30% want to see brands use it more.
Twitter is a fast and simple social media platform that is easy to grow a following on from scratch.
In this quick guide, we’re going to break down exactly how to get Twitter followers whether you’re struggling to grow or are starting an account from scratch.
1. Identify the audience you want
You should consider who would find value from your brand or business. Think about the characteristics of your potential customers and what your niche is.
If you want to sell college athletic gear, you should connect with sports accounts, alumni accounts, and influencers in the college or sports industry.
Find out which large accounts and influencers in your industry are the most popular by using a tool like Buzzsumo.
If you want to find out more about your target audience, Twitter’s Advanced Search is a good place to start.
When you come across Twitter profiles that are relevant to your niche, take a look at who they follow and what hashtags they’re using so you can join the conversation.
It is important to remember that you should look for people who are active and engaged, and have a profile picture. You should avoid the “default eggs.”
If you want to engage with a certain group of people on Twitter, you should create a private list of accounts that fit your interests. This way, you can easily remember the accounts and come back to engage with their followers at a later time.
2. Utilize Twitter lists
After you have determined who your target audience is, there are a lot of ways to establish a connection with them and get them to start following you.
There is one way to effectively use Twitter lists and that is by creating them. Let’s take a look at how to do this.
- First, you’ll need to head over to the lists page by clicking on the drop down icon on your profile and selecting “Lists.” You can also do this by visiting your profile and clicking on the “Lists” tab.
- Next, click on the “Create new list” button. You’ll need to enter a name for your list and a description of your choice. Choose whether to make the list public or private.
- Once you’ve filled in the details and are happy with it, go ahead and save the list.
Adding and removing users:
- Visit the user’s profile and click on the drop down icon.
- Once clicked, you’ll see the option to “add or remove from lists.” Selecting this will then enable you to add or remove the user from your list.
Twitter lists can help draw your target audience to your profile.
The user may be interested in the notification and click on the list.
If someone views your tweets and likes them, they may follow you.
To make this strategy work best, you should come up with a catchy and meaningful title for the list.
I have a list of people that I want to connect with and build a relationship with. This list includes professionals, industry experts, and influencers.
If the user notices that they have been added to the list, they may tweet to the creator of the list. This can then lead to a conversation and the beginning of a relationship.
You can use Twitter lists to add people who mention a specific keyword or hashtag. To do this, you can use the IFTTT tool.
If This Then That (IFTTT) is a free web-based service that allows users to connect different applications together in order to automate tasks.
Visit the site and create an account. Then, use a recipe to build a Twitter list from a specific hashtag. The app will let you enter the hashtag to search for.
If, for example, I use the hashtag #ContentMarketing, this will add anyone who mentions that hashtag in their tweet to my Twitter list.
3. Following your target audience
Don’t be afraid to be the first person to follow someone if you want them to follow you back.
If you’ve been engaging with your target audience and they’ve been responding to you, it’s probably time for you to follow them on Twitter.
Twitter can be time-consuming, but there are tools to make the process faster.
Tweepi
Tweepi is a great tool for Twitter management.
Twitter is an important tool for building a targeted following.
The tool allows you to follow new users via different methods. These are:
- Follow Followers – Follow new users that follow a specific account
- Follow Friends – Follow users that a specific account follows
- List Members – Follow users off a Twitter list
- Paste & Analyze – Copy/paste a comma separated list of Twitter users and analyze them
- Tweet Search – Follow users who just tweeted about a certain topic
- User Search – Search for users by their bio, interest, full name, company name, location or other criteria
If you want to gain more followers on Twitter, I recommend using the “Follow Followers” feature and entering the Twitter handle of an influencer or leader in your industry.
There, you’ll be able to set-up some criteria. I would recommend using the following:
Friend or follower > “Neither”
This means you will follow people who are not already following you.
I suggest using the “Hide previously followed / unfollowed” option if you have Tweepi premium, so you don’t accidentally follow someone again.
When you are satisfied with the criteria, go ahead and follow the accounts that are shown.
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a great tool for managing your Twitter and Instagram follower growth. Some people use it every day to keep track of both their Twitter and Instagram.
When you open up the tool, you’ll see various features that let you manage who you follow and who you don’t follow on the platforms.
After you’ve chosen the Twitter account you want, go to the “Copy Followers” tab. On this page, you can follow the followers of another user, much like you can on Tweepi. To do this, click the “Copy Followers” button, enter the username of the account you want to copy, select how many users you want to follow each day from the drop-down menu, and click confirm.
Enter an account’s handle and hit enter.
It’s too bad Crowdfire doesn’t have filters like those found on Tweepi. You should keep that in mind when deciding who to follow.
Underneath the “Copy Followers” tab, you’ll find “Keyword Follow.”
The new feature is cool because it suggests accounts to follow that have recently tweeted about the same thing as you.
I really like how Crowdfire makes it so easy to keep track of people who either aren’t active or who haven’t followed you back.
This feature will help you neaten up your account and maintain a good ratio of followers to followees.
4. When in doubt, tweet more often
Twitter requires a more aggressive content strategy than Facebook or Instagram.
Twitter accounts that perform well post an average of 12 times per week, which is about twice a day.
Brands should post more often than they think they need to on social media platforms because the platforms move quickly. It’s key to not only promote your brand, but also to switch up the types of content you publish.
There are a lot of ways to fill up your content calendar.
You’re constantly bombarded with information from all sides, and it’s tough to keep up. Your followers are constantly tweeting at you, industry articles are coming out constantly, there are always new statistics and breaking news, and people are constantly updating you on their personal lives. It’s tough to keep up with all of it.
Publishing content on Twitter frequently will help you appear higher in the Twitter algorithm, as long as you diversify your content strategy.
The most important thing to take away from this is that if you want people to follow you on Twitter, you need to have fresh content that shows you are active and engaging.
If you use social scheduling software, you can plan your content in advance, without having to Tweet in real-time all the time. This will help you get new followers all the time.
5. Prioritize visual content whenever possible
Twitter users are more likely to engage with tweets that contain visual content.
Brands that want more people to look at their tweets should consider adding images to them. Although tweets that are just text are fine, tweets with images are more likely to catch the attention of people who are quickly scrolling through their feed.
As you’re brainstorming posts and types of content to publish, consider:
- Adapt text-based posts into images using editing tools like Canva, Adobe Spark or Venngage.
- Creating infographics (fact: infographics saw a 67% rise in 2020 and represent some of the most-shared content on Twitter).
- Videos (think: how-tos, greetings, snippets from long-form content).
- .GIFs, memes and image macros (when appropriate).
If you want to grow your Twitter following, consider posting more visuals. This could help keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
If you frequently share content from your website on Twitter, it’s important to have an image that previews the article that isn’t just a random screenshot.
6. Harness the power of hashtags
Twitter hashtags are a way of making your posts searchable and easily found by others. They are similar to SEO keywords in that they help people to find your content.
Tweets that feature a hashtag are more likely to receive engagement than those without a hashtag.
If you want more people to find your Twitter account, add a couple of hashtags to your tweets. For example, you can:
- Supplement posts with industry hashtags (such as #SEO or #ContentMarketing) which are great for your professional content.
- Inject some personality into your feed by using popular community hashtags (think: #MidweekMotivation)
- Piggyback on event-based hashtags as well (think: hashtags awards shows, sporting events and anything else topical)
You should only use one or two hashtags on a post, otherwise it will look spammy.
You can use hashtags strategically by taking advantage of Twitter analytics to find out which ones get the most followers for your brand.
7. Engage with Twitter communities in your industry
This is an excellent example of how to gain followers on Twitter by using hashtags.
These groups come together to provide moral support, discuss professional advice and simply chat. There are many communities on Twitter that come together to discuss things like moral support, professional advice, and just chatting. These groups are organized using hashtags (#DTCfam, #MarketingTwitter, and #PRTwitter, to name a few).
There are communities for specific industries and tips, as well as general communities. Sharing your advice or experiences with these communities is a great way to attract new followers.
Analyzing hashtags can help you find communities online that are interested in what your business has to offer. You can also look at the profiles of people who are influential in your industry to see which hashtags they are using.
8. Master the arts of tagging, retweeting and replying
You can increase the number of followers you have on Twitter without spending a lot of time on the platform. All you need to do is make the most of the time you do spend on Twitter.
Although you can and should schedule tweets to help with engagement, you don’t want your account to look like it is run by a bot.
To be successful, you need to get close to your followers, customers, and industry leaders. Here are some tips:
- When replying to accounts, keep in mind that a detailed, thoughtful response will score you more potential followers than a brief one-word reply.
- Shout out other brands whenever possible. Tagging (@mentioning) other brands as a compliment is a popular tactic to show some love to others in your industry.
- Retweet your fans and followers. Despite only taking a few seconds, doing so shows that you value engagement and are actively participating on the platform.
Small pieces of your engagement strategy, like activity and content, contribute to the bigger picture of attracting followers.
Conclusion
With these tips, you can expect your follower count to grow slowly but steadily. You may also be surprised at how easy it is to grow your Twitter audience.
It is not enough to just post content on Twitter and hope that your following will grow. You must be strategic in your content, engaging with others, and optimizing your profile if you want to increase your Twitter following.
To get more Twitter followers, start by taking these steps. Many of them don’t require a lot of time, but they can make a big difference in terms of new leads, customers, and exposure for your brand.
If you post content that is appealing to your target audience, you can anticipate increased engagement on your social media posts.
Including high-quality hashtags in your posts is especially important.