How I grew my Twitter following by 1000 in 90 days
Everyone who uses Twitter wants more followers. It's almost an eternal quest, especially if you use it for your business. More followers equals more engagement and more engagement equals more business, right? Well, not necessarily, especially if your followers aren't really interested in you or your product. There are tons of fake and 'follow me and I'll follow back' accounts, neither of which provide any value, even if they do make it appear to the outside world that you've got loads of followers.
I decided pretty early in my Twitter 'career' that, while I wanted to grow my following,I also wanted to make sure I attracted real followers. I grew my page slowly by doing three things:
- Following relevant and influential accounts
- Posting and sharing great content
- Engaging in conversations
It didn't take too long to reach around 400 followers, which wasn't bad, but I wanted more. The truth was I was a little impatient and unsatisfied with the slow growth rate despite following all the best practice rules. My Twitter page was on an upward trajectory, so I knew I was on the right track, but how could I entice relevant followers at a faster rate?S ure, I could force the issue by posting every 10 minutes and hoping to reach more people this way. But this was completely impractical, there just isn't enough time in the day, plus I was worried about spamming people.
Then I came across a few sites that promised to grow Twitter followers by extraordinary amounts. Was this too good to be true? Yes, in most cases, it was. They just didn't deliver the engaged followers that I need to grow my business. After a little hunting around I found what I was looking for.
Social Quant does things a little differently. Rather than follow a random bunch of accounts in the hope they follow you back, they instead follow accounts based on the keywords that you choose. For example, if you're a mechanic you might include the phrases 'car repairs' and 'auto servicing'. Social Quant will then follow accounts that are interested in these terms and therefore relevant to your business. It simultaneously unfollows any accounts that don't follow you back. You can then tweak your keywords, changing any that aren't converting into followers, adding more and removing others as you see which ones gain you followers and which ones don't.
I noticed that if I continued to follow the three things I mentioned earlier my Twitter account began to grow, and quickly. I passed 1,000 followers within a month and by the end of the eighth week I'd easily passed 3,000. And they were high quality followers too, with not a fake account among them. As my followers and engagement through Social Quant grew, my organic following was growing too, at an almost 50/50 ratio.
I found a new tool called Twitter Counter the other day, which offered a free trial so I decided to check it out. There was an option to view how my Twitter account had grown over the past three months, so of course I clicked the link. I was amazed (and not a little pleased) to see that my account had grown over 1,000%. That was a pretty awesome feeling!
Of course, that's just one piece of the puzzle. To ensure your new followers stick around you still need to follow best practices and regularly post relevant content. Perhaps you're wondering how you're going to find any time to tie all this together, so feel free to check out my previous blog posts on time management, both on social media and beyond for some help. Do bear in mind, these are just a few ideas and tools that worked for me - not an endorsement of these sites. I have no affiliation with them and don't represent their services, just wanted to share what I've found useful. Remember, it's always worth experimenting and changing things up if you're not getting the results you want. It's your business and you want it to be successful, so don't settle until you're happy.
I hope you've found my experience useful. I'm always on the lookout for tools that will help me further boost my business so stay tuned for more tips. I'd love to hear about any tips that have worked for you.
In the meantime, here are a few quick takeaways:
Best practice- A great starting point. Until you're comfortable, it's definitely best to follow the insights of the experts. Once you get a handle on how things work, you can begin to tweak to suit your needs. If something's working, keep doing it. If it's not, stop and try something different.
Real followers- Organic, engaged followers are what we all crave. But sometimes it can be really helpful to have a little push to get things moving. Social Quant works for me, but there are other reputable companies that you might find useful. Remember: don't pay for fake or indifferent followers that will probably unfollow you or never engage with your content and add no value to your business.
Consistency- Keep content ticking over using a scheduling tool if you don't have time to do it manually - I use one and it's so much quicker. Your new followers will only keep engaging with you if your content is great, and if you're consistently sharing and interacting.