Hello tweeters and webians. The question that I am asked most frequently and repeatedly is "How would I get more followers quickly". You should know that it's not a kind of magical stuff. You cannot simply get thousands of followers by tonight (unless you buy followers, which is against twitter's guidelines). So how can you actually increase number of followers ethically? It's easy; just follow the steps provided bellow. These steps are the results of deep research concentrating on the particular ways to build genuine follows. Hence, study them closely.
First of all think why do you want followers?
- You may want followers to increase webutation (i.e. the reputation on the web). Almost everyone wants to be popular and having a fan base in twitter helps you do that.
- Great followers are good customers. If you have the quality to convert fans into customers, then having huge number of followers will help you in the increment of sales!
- Twitter is a great platform to publish your views to broad number of public. Suppose you have a game-changing idea in some niche. Then sharing that idea to thousands of followers will make it discoverable to one more thousands of people as it will be retweeted again and again (it it's good enough).
Things to do:
- Build an Awesome Bio: People often get attracted to a profile with an eye-catchy bio. Show off a little about yourself. But before writing, choose a particular niche (anything you're expert in). Suppose you're a computer engineer, then it may go like — "a programmer, an engineer, a fun lover, a cake eater, a passionate photographer and a good son". Mix things up and make it interesting to read.
- Give a good headshot: You can't expect someone to follow you without a good profile picture. Be sure to use your own photo with your face clearly visible. Or else tweeters may misjudge you as a spammer or bot. Besides your friends or family members will find it easy to recognize you.
- Connect yourself: If you have other social accounts like facebook, google+, pinterest etc., be sure to link your twitter account in all of them. If you have a popular blog or websites, do the same and tell your readers to follow you. Use various social widgets in the site. But don't spam to promote yourself. Besides, while sending personal and professional mails, include your profile link at the signatures.
- Tweet often: No one will be interested to follow a silent user (who doesn't tweet, doesn't text). So be an active user. Tweet almost 10-12 times day especially when people are engaged to it mostly (for example, before 10 am and after 7 pm). Share valuable content (e.g. interesting links, quotes, news) that matters to your followers. While tweeting try to stick into your own theme. Whenever you find a big fresh story, try to tweet it before someone else does! This will give you opportunity to get more retweets and thus getting more discovered.
- Follow wisely: There are three types of people out there on twitter. One who does follow, one who doesn't and other who are in no need to be explained (bots and spammers). Never mind. Try to build a list of users who follows. Follow them. Few celebrities follow back — follow'em too! Make sure to unfollow people who don't follow you back. I'm using manageflitter.
- Use Mention and Hashtags: By using @username you can easily mention people in any tweet (same as facebook's tag feature). This will increase discovery of your tweets. You can use them to talk with celebs too (who doesn't follow you back). Using the same function reply to other people publicly. And keep another thing in mind, while retweeting do not simply press retweet. Instead copy the text and tweet it like this — "RT @username: <text>". Hashtag is a cool feature of twitter. Using this you can easily enter in any trending discussions. This will increase your profile visibility.
- Use F4F sites: There are many 'follow for follow' sites out there, but most of them are fake and spammy. So think before you choose one. My favorite F4F site is Twiends.
Things to Avoid:
Newbies often make mistakes in search of getting followers. Here's a list of things that you must avoid in account to build a good fan base.
- Don't flood followers. Tweeting often is good but tweeting a lot is annoying to people. Overwhelming will lead your followers to unfollow you!
- Avoid long tweets. Long tweets might sound irritating to read. So keep it brief enough.
- Avoid Autobots. Autobots are the scripts and programs that send a direct message to whoever follows you. This annoys your follower which is harmful to you. So you better stop it if you're using one.
- Don't post copyrighted materials without prior permission of the owner. Otherwise, this may hang you a fine of many bucks.
Lastly, do not think about how much followers you have. Just be honest, work hard and follow the steps I mentioned above — you'll reach the goal one day! Now it'll be really unfair if you don't follow me (I post funny stuffs too!). Good bye for now. For any queries related to the article don't feel ashamed to ask me in Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or in the Comments bellow. Respect goats. Spread #peace.