Top 10 Ways to Get More Twitter Followers
One of the things I’m asked about the most is how to increase my Twitter followers. I haven’t
run into many people who don’t want to increase their numbers, so today I’m going to give you
my top 10 ways to get more Twitter followers.
Why do I want more Twitter followers?
It gives me credibility
It increases my reach, and makes it easier to spread the word, no matter what my message.
How do I get more Twitter followers?
1. Be sure to follow people back. It’s considered good manners to follow people back who
follow you. This doesn’t mean you have to follow people who make you uncomfortable or who
are trying to sell you 10,000 followers. Use common sense, but unless there’s a good reason be
nice and follow people back.
2. Don’t PROTECT YOUR TWEETS. On your Twitter profile there’s the option to protect
your tweets. This locks your account and doesn’t let people follow you unless you approve them.
If you feel the need to protect your tweets, you really shouldn’t be on Twitter. This social media
platform is a place to get found, not lurk.
3. Make sure your 160 character ABOUT ME gives a good picture of who you are. You
don’t want to over use hashtags here, but you do want to cover all the things you might tweet
about. Here’s what I have as my description: Writer & Author—passionate for life's stories &
God's path. #Militaryfamily blogger http://Guideposts.org #steampunk #vets #scifi
#socialmedia4writers
4. Show your face. Always use a picture of YOURSELF as your Twitter icon. The evidence is
overwhelming. People respond to a head shot where you can see the person’s smile. The only
exception is if you have a business account. Then you can use your company’s logo.
5. Have a regular presence on Twitter. I Tweet a lot more now than I did when I started out.
More first goal was to Tweet four to six times each day, four or five days a week. I use Hootsuite
to schedule my Tweets throughout the day. Do NOT send out all your tweets at once. This is
called hogging the stream and is the height of bad manners!
6. BE CONSISTENT with the subject of your tweets. I tweet about social media, writing,
some books, and issues important to military families. Occasionally, I’ll find something that I
just want to share outside of those topics, but that’s an exception, not the norm.
7. Make sure you’re sharing valuable content with your Twitter updates. Don’t make your
Tweets all about you. Instead, promote others who have something valuable to say to your
followers. I know it’s counter intuitive, but it works every time!
8. Look for strategic people to follow. Here’s what I mean. I’m working on a science fiction
manuscript and trying to grow my Twitter followers for that specific market. To find new people
to follow, I visit some of my favorite science fiction author’s profiles. Then I click on their
followers. This does two things.
1. It gives me people to follow who are interested in following a scifi author.
2. It gives me a good chance of them following me back because they’re already good about
following back.
9. Reply to others publically. Twitter is a public medium and people like to be mentioned. If
someone says something nice about you, or mentions you, be sure to reply publically to thank
them. I also keep a list of people who regularly mention me and try to find something they do
that I can mention.
10. Don’t use an auto responder. You may think you’re being polite, but what you’re really
being is irritating. Auto responders are obvious and no one likes messages from a computer
clogging up their timeline.
What NOT to do
There are several things that may seem tempting for short cuts to Twitter followers. I cannot urge
you strongly enough not to try them. This is one of these times when if it sounds too good to be
true, it is.
Do NOT buy Twitter followers.
Do NOT use ANY automatic programs to increase your followers on Twitter.
Twitter has very strict policies against these practices and I’ve known several people who have
had their Twitter accounts suspended because of this.
Twitter FAQs
Many of the questions I get about Twitter involve etiquette issues. Today I want to go over some
of the basics. If you have a question that doesn’t get addressed be sure to leave a comment and
I’ll answer it there.
Which Should I Do, Reply or Retweet?
A REPLY is used when you answer a comment, or thank someone for mentioning you.
It’s good form to reply to someone who retweets something you said.
A RETWEET is used when you want to repeat someone else’s Tweet.
It’s poor form to retweet a tweet that mentions you. It’s not an unforgivable error, we’ve all
accidentally hit the retweet button instead of reply, just try not to make it a habit.
Is There a Rule about How Often I Should or Shouldn’t Tweet?
Twitter has a 140 character limit for a reason and it’s considered bad form to Tweet 3 or more
times right in a row. Doing this is called Hogging the Stream or Hijacking the Stream. When I
schedule my tweets I try not to schedule them for closer than ten minute increments.
What’s Up With All Those @ Lists People Tweet?
There are several times you may see this.
First, it’s polite to thank new followers, and some people group them together in lists. This isn’t
a bad thing, if you don’t hog the Twitter stream doing it.
Second, there are certain designations for days of the week. For example, Friday is often
designated as #FF. This stand for FOLLOW FRIDAY. It’s a time for people to recommend
others as valuable people to follow. I’ve actually found some really cool folks to follow through
this. And once again, it’s not a bad thing, if the person doing it doesn’t Hijack the Twitter stream
with multiple #FF posts in a row.
Do I have to Follow Everyone Who Follows Me?
No, absolutely not. I try to follow the people I believe have something valuable to say. I DON’T
follow those who look like spammers or sketchy accounts. Often times you can tell because they
don’t have a picture, only that irritating egg avatar. Another way I check is to look at the
description they give for themselves. If they don’t have a description, I’m always skeptical.
What Does RT, MM, OH, HT Mean?
RT—means RETWEET.
MM—is MUSIC MONDAY, similar to Follow Friday.
OH—is OVERHEARD.
HT—is HEARD THROUGH.
Clean Up Your Twitter Ratios and Don’t get Stuck at 2000
NOTE: This is important information, and was originally shared on my blog. The
screenshots I refer to in the directions can be found at the link below:
http://thewriteconversation.blogspot.com/2014/01/social-media-mondayclean-up-your.html
Twitter is great social media tool for growing an online presence. But like any good tool, you
have to take care of it, to keep it preforming in tip-top shape.
Today I’m going to share how you can clean up your twitter ratios and get rid of excess weight
to keep your account working efficiently.
The first thing you want to do is look at your ratio of the accounts you follow and the accounts
that follow you.
You want this number to stay pretty close, especially as you reach the 2000 follower ceiling.
This is important because Twitter has certain hard and fast rules about how many people you can
follow. This makes following more than 2000 accounts tricky. Here is how Twitter explains it:
…every user can follow 2000 people total. Once you’ve followed 2000 users, there are limits to
the number of additional users you can follow: this limit is different for every user and is based
on your ratio of followers to following.
The best way to avoid hitting this ceiling is by keeping your ratio close. But if you hit this limit,
you can use a free program I recommend to unfollow people who are not following you back.
I’ve looked into a lot of programs and www.Manageflitter.com is by far my favorite. It allows
me to unfollow a large number of accounts in one sitting.
SPECIAL NOTE: Twitter has strict guidelines about aggressive following and churn. BEFORE
you work with ManageFlitter, know the rules so you won’t be penalized.
Definitions:
Aggressive following: Twitter defines aggressive following as:
indiscriminately following hundreds of accounts just to garner attention. However, following a
few users if their accounts seem interesting is normal and is not considered aggressive.
Aggressive Follow Churn: Twitter defines aggressive follow churn this way:
when an account repeatedly follows and then un-follows a large number of users. This may be
done to get lots of people to notice them, to circumvent a Twitter limit, or to change their
follower-to-following ratio.
I am giving you an option to explore if you hit the 2000 Twitter limit, but it’s important to be
very careful how you do it. It’s better if you keep your ratio close enough that you don’t have
problem when you hit the 2000 ceiling.
How to Safely Use ManageFlitter
1. Go to the www.ManageFlitter.com website and click START.
2. Now Click CONNECT TO TWITTER. This will take you to a screen and you’ll have to give
the ManageFlitter app permission to access your twitter account.
Now you’ll have to wait for it to load all your date. Depending on how many followers you have
it may take a few minutes. The developers at ManageFlitter have a great sense of humor, so be
prepared to be entertained. (See screenshot below)
It takes about five minutes for me. Below is a screenshot of all the people that I follow who don’t
follow me back. You’ll notice there are six pages. At up to one hundred people per page, that’s
542 people who don’t follow me back.
Actually I will keep up to about 200 who don’t follow me back. There are certain celebrities that
I follow who I know will never follow me back. And that’s fine because I get value from the
tweets they send out.
It’s the average people, like you and me, that I want to weed out. I try to do this logically. So the
first thing I do is go to my last page. Because those are the people I’ve been following the
longest, so they’ve had enough time to follow me back if they’re so inclined.
On my account, since I use this program regularly, I know that page six is full of celebrities that
probably will never follow me, so I don’t go that far back.
3. As I hover over an account, a pop up window appears with all the relevant information I need
to make a good decision about whether or not to unfollow the account. Here you see the account
info on MacGregor Literary. I won’t unfollow them because they are a valuable source of
industry information. (See screenshot below)
4. Now I continue going down the list and clicking UNFOLLOW to everyone I want to stop
following. Below is a screenshot of what that looks like. I make it a policy to NOT unfollow
more than about 190 accounts per day. This keeps me under the radar of the Twitter police.
NOTE: I also don’t bother with checking the first page on my ManageFlitter account because
those are people that I’ve followed within the past couple of days and I want to give them a
chance to follow me back before I decide to unfollow them.
5. Once I reach the number of accounts I want to unfollow, I just close the website. I don't have
to do anything else. ManageFlitter gives you quite a few options to unlock more unfollows, but
since I don't unfollow more than 190 per day, I haven't found that necessary.
How did I get into this mess?
Now you’re probably wondering how it is that I’m following so many who don’t follow me
back. About fifty percent of these are people that I ran across on the Internet and I thought would
be interesting to follow. The other fifty percent are accounts that have followed me and then
unfollowed me. That happens quite a bit, so it’s important to keep close watch on your account.
I try to clean up my ratio about twice a month with ManageFlitter. But I check for new Twitter
followers on my Twitter account almost daily. I want to make sure that if someone has found my
account valuable enough to follow, I return the favor and follow them back.
Blessings,
Edie Melson