In this article, I’m going to show you how to build a large Twitter following. This may seem difficult, but the good news is that building a following of real people (ones who are interested in your niche) is very simple.
The approach that I am going to share with you is the exact same one that has helped me build a following of 179,000 fans in just over 30 months.
Why is this important? If you don’t have a following, then no one will see your tweets.
My following helps generate 35,000 profile visits, over 4.3 million views of my content, and adds 3,900 potential new clients every month.
So how do we do this?
Step 1 – Identify Your Niche
In order to build—and more importantly retain—a following, we need to know what our niche is and who is our ideal customer.
That way, we can be certain that we are building the right following and that our content is going to be the right content. We need to be posting content that is relevant and will resonate with them.
When we get this right, it will not only help us retain our following, but it will also ensure that your following will share the content with their followers. This will help to extend our reach even further and also help to build our audience organically.
The better we define our niche, the better we can target our content. This leads to more views and more shares.
My niche is Leadership. My ideal follower is someone either in a leadership position or someone looking to move into leadership. Either way, he or she is interested in improving leadership and wants to stay informed on this topic.
TWITTER FACT: 50% of UK Twitter users have tried a new restaurant based on a Twitter recommendation.
Step 2 – Start Following People on Twitter
The quickest way to build a following is to simply follow people.
To do that, just open up your Twitter account, enter your niche in the search, and press enter. The search results will have several tabs, one of which will be accounts. Select that, and it will provide you with a list of accounts that are associated with that topic.
Now you just click the follow button and follow the accounts.
One of the interesting aspects of Twitter is that when you follow people, around 20% of them will actually follow you back. So by following someone, you are actually creating a potential follower.
You can technically follow up to 1000 people per day.
But Twitter doesn’t like aggressive following, and if your account is deemed to be aggressively following accounts, it can be sent to Twitter Jail. Which basically means that your account is locked, and you can’t follow or tweet for about a day or so.
The best approach is to keep below the radar and just follow between 500-750 people per month. Even this is a very aggressive number.
If 20% of these people follow you back, then you can expect to increase your following by 150 people per month, for just 30-35 minutes of effort.
QUICK TIP: Use your Smartphone to do the following. It’s much quicker than a PC and you can easily follow 500 people in about 5 minutes.
You can follow as many people as you like—up to a maximum of 5000 people or up to your total number of followers—whichever is higher.
This means if you have 3000 followers, then the maximum number of people you can follow is 5000. However, if you have 10,000 followers then you can follow up to a maximum of 10,000 people.
Here is some more information from Twitter on follower limits.
TWITTER FACT: 67% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter.
Remember to Unfollow Those that Don’t Follow Back
Unfollow those people that are not following you back. This will create enough space for you to continue with the following. There are plenty of tools that support this, such as www.manageflitter.com, and once you have unfollowed enough people then you can start the follow process again.
QUICK TIP: Only unfollow those people who have not followed back after 30 days. We need to give people a chance to follow you back before we unfollow them.
Step 3 – Buy Twitter Followers
Note that this is something that not everyone recommends. Paid followers don’t really serve much purpose. They can’t like or retweet our content, nor are they going to be potential clients either (because paid followers are typically fake and not real people).
However, what they do provide, is an opportunity for us to gain real followers. No one wants to follow a new Twitter account with 0 followers. Psychologically, people are going to follow Twitter accounts with lots of people already following.
Buying Twitter followers is very easy. There are hundreds of sites offering this service, and you can buy large amounts of followers at a very cheap price. Don’t buy too many followers though. Again, this is something that you’ll want to be careful with, and you can start to remove these fake followers as you get real ones.
QUICK TIP: Buy Twitter followers as soon as you start to work on building a following. The fact that you have a high number of followers will psychologically encourage real people you follow to follow you back.
Step 4 – Identify the Key Players & Influencers in Your Niche
We can further increase the percentage of follow backs by making sure that we follow the right people. By identifying the influencers in our niche, we can increase our chances of follow back if we follow their followers.
For example, as I mentioned earlier my niche is Leadership and some of the key influencers in my niche are people like John Maxwell, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, etc.
By following their followers, I increase the chance of follow back because I know they are interested in the niche that I am targeting. Once you have identified the influencers in your niche, click on their profile, then click on followers, and it will provide you a list of their followers.
Now just start to follow them. Again, this is much quicker if you use a smartphone.
If you are unsure who the influencers are in your niche, you can use this tool. You’ll log in using your Twitter profile and then select Influencers and input your topic. The free version of this tool will then prove a list of the Top 10 Influencers in that niche.
TWITTER FACT: Influence is based on the number of retweets, not the number of followers that you have. Having 1 million fake followers doesn’t give you any real influence and it won’t generate any leads or sales.
Step 5 – Update Your Profile to Reflect Your Niche
I cannot stress the importance of a good profile enough. When we follow people, they’re going to view and check out our profile. If it is not attractive or relevant, this will reduce the percentage of people who will follow back.
- You must include a photo of yourself in the profile.
- Make your bio interesting and relevant to your niches.
- Include your website in your bio.
- Create a professional header profile using a good quality image, your logo, and vision or company slogan.
Here is an example of a new client that I have just set up:
It has a very clear picture and header profile, including details of her niche. It’s an attractive profile which will increase follower conversion once we start that process.
On the contrary, I still see many Twitter users that have a profile page like this:
How many of you would follow this profile back if it followed you? The better our profile, the higher the follow back ratio will be.
TWITTER FACT: Profiles with a picture, on average, have 10 times as many followers as those profiles without a picture.
Step 6 – Start Tweeting Great Content
In the end, it’s all about the content. Once we have people interested and looking at our profiles, they are only going to follow and interact with us, if we offer great content.
So what makes great content? Simply put, it needs to be entertaining, informative, and add value.
This can be something as simple as an inspirational quote, a great picture, a link to an article or piece of news, a link to a video, a product review, a testimonial, product updates or special offers.
Here are some interesting facts from Twitter about the type of content and the engagement that it generates:
- Photos average a 35% boost in Retweets
- Videos get a 28% boost
- Quotes get a 19% boost in Retweets
- Including a number receives a 17% bump in Retweets
- Hashtags receive a 16% boost
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I am a big fan of quotes. People like them and I’ve found that they get 17% more retweets for me. There’s also an endless supply of them on Google! So it’s an easy way to get some interesting content to keep people interested.
QUICK TIP: Start looking at the top influencers in your niche and see what content they are tweeting. Which ones are getting the most interaction?
Additional Bonus: Automated Tools
There are many tools that can be used to help you in building and managing your Twitter following. I’ve written an article on this and you can learn more about my favorite Twitter tools here.
Conclusion
You need to be on Twitter.
You need to identify your niche to ensure you build the right following.
Build your following, by following people who follow the influencers in your niche.
Consider buying Twitter followers when starting out to make your account more attractive and to speed things up.
Create a profile that reflects your niche to increase following conversion.
Tweet relevant content that is entertaining, informative, and adds value. Inspirational quotes can really help here.
Use tools to schedule tweets.
If you follow this process, it can help increase your Twitter following in under 10 minutes per day.
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