How to Grow on Twitter

So, you want to be a Twitter star? Well, maybe a star, but maybe you want to grow your followers, reach more of your target audience, and get some traffic to your website or blog.

Whatever your reasons for wanting to grow your following, your brand or your business, you are going to need a strategy.

Have you ever followed some trending hashtags only to find yourself, some time later, deep down a social media rabbit hole? Well, with the right strategy in place, you can be the creator of that engaging content and have the masses following your trending hashtags and tweets all the way back to your profile.

Rest assured, if you put in a little bit of work, you can easily gain a wider Twitter following.

Twitter has become a vast universe unto itself where the content is so wide-ranging that you can catch everything from breaking news to the brunch specials at your favorite restaurant.

Do you have a last name that rhymes with Smardashian? Probably not.

Which means you are going to have to work to increase your audience on Twitter. Using social media has become a way to create dialogue and get personal with your audience. So, how do you get more Twitter followers and grow your brand or business? Well, we have some ideas.

You can spend a lot of energy trying to create perfect tweets but without using Twitter in an efficient way to promote audience engagement, you will be wasting your time.

Luckily, we have compiled the best guide for growing your Twitter account.

Benefits of Gaining Followers on Twitter

Social media is the first place people check when “investigating” a new person or business so it is important to have a great Twitter account that highlights what you are all about.

Create engaging, interesting content and watch your follower count skyrocket.

Increased Engagement

Engaging with your followers essential, therefore, posting content relevant to your brand is crucial for connecting with your audience. A connected audience is one that will comment on, and retweet your content.

Do you have a restaurant that serves a daily special? Post a tantalizing photo with a tweet that is so descriptive your audience will be begging for more. And the best part? This engagement can move offline. Before you know it, you will have followers linking up at the restaurant to try your amazing dishes!

Greater Reach

Increasing your Twitter followers can help you potentially reach a larger audience. When followers retweet your content, it will be seen by their followers as well. If one of them retweets it, it will be seen by their followers and on it goes.

If your audience finds your content engaging and retweets your tweets, you can ensure that your follower count will grow.

First, figure out who you are trying to reach. Who is your target audience? Curate your tweets to fit with your intended followers. Look at people or brands who are doing things that are similar to you, and follow them. Follow some of their followers, interact with those followers. These connections will bring you followers in return.

Draw Attention to Specific Content

If you have written a fabulous blog post, an “Ultimate Guide to” whatever, have a limited-time offer, or have created something you want people to know about, call attention to it with a hashtag.

Hashtags, when used properly will draw your intended audience to your post. They can open you and your brand to a whole new world of potential followers. It is important, however, to not put too many hashtags in one post -- you do not want your tweet to become unreadable!

Here is a guide to using Twitter hashtags where you will find tips on how to use them most effectively.

Strategies for Growing on Twitter

If you have toiled on social media platforms without much return, there may be a reason you aren’t attracting an organic following. Sometimes it isn’t your tweets or the content of your tweets but something else entirely.

Follow these strategies to make sure you grow on Twitter:

Complete your profile

Your audience wants to know what you or your brand are all about. Pick a great photo, and make it your profile photo.

Fill out your bio so that the world knows how interesting and cool you are. The fabulousness of your brand should be reflected in your Twitter profile. If it fits with your brand image, use humor.

Ensure that you are thorough in your profile; followers want to know you and your profile is their introduction.

Schedule your tweets

If you are serious about growing your follower count, you need to be consistent in your tweeting.

Rather than being on Twitter 24/7, you can schedule tweets to go out at specific times. Use a third-party app to schedule your tweets for regular intervals. Keeping your account active will show you are committed to the platform and give potential followers a reason to invest their time in you.

Your followers will increase the more you tweet and it will save you a great deal of time in the long run by writing tweets in advance scheduling them for the future. Do a little research to determine when your target audience is most active and schedule tweets for that time period.

Find a great list of tools to help schedule your tweets here.

At the time of this writing, Twitter is testing a scheduling feature on their web app. For accounts lucky enough to be included in the test, you will see a schedule option at the bottom of the composition window (highlighted in yellow below). Clicking the icon will open up a scheduler window that will allow you to choose the date and time of your tweet.

Organically grow your Twitter following

Tools and apps are great for maximizing your time with your audience. However, you must connect with your audience organically in order to get them to stay. Twitter is both a media platform and a social media platform. This means that in order to be effective at promoting your content, you need to, well, be social!

Tweet, retweet, respond to questions, like posts, use hashtags. All of these activities are a form of social engagement with your followers.

If you limit your interactions to, say, one tweet Monday through Friday at 2pm, you risk seeming like a bot. No matter how great your tweets are, you will risk looking phony.

Check out social media influencers and see what they are doing. Examine how engaged they are and how often they tweet. While might seem entirely natural and off the cuff, the majority of influencers are following a carefully crafted strategy to maximize their engagement.

There is a process to calculate a good engagement rate against which you can measure your own. While complicated, the engagement rate can be calculated using this formula:

Average Engagement Rate (%) Per Post = Total Engagement / Follower Counts / Number of Posts x 100 

The best influencers pay attention to their ideal engagement rate in order to better engage with their followers and ensure that any promoted tweets are followed by personal content.

Check out who your followers are following, chances are, they will be following some users in your target audience. Follow any account that fits in with your brand. Of course, it is essential to create content that is exciting, while sharing videos or photos of your brand in action. This will ensure organic growth of your audience.

How to Gain More Twitter Followers Using Your Blog

Your blog may be where you are able to share more expansive content in a single post, but social media is where your followers will find your blog.

Your blog is where you can further develop your brand with vibrant photos and carefully curated blogs. Tweet a link to your blog telling your followers (and any potential followers!) that this post cannot be missed! Offer exclusive content and you will see your engagement and follower count increase as people will not want to miss out on what you have to say! FOMO is very, very real!

Once you have more followers, you can use your tweets to further your brand agenda. Link the great photos from your most recent blog posts to Twitter to entice your audience. Again, you can arrange to schedule tweets and post content that is of interest to both your blog and social media audience.

Using Twitter to Grow your Business

Twitter is one of the best social media platforms for business. You can very easily have Twitter working for you while you are busy working offline. Do some research to find out the best time to post on social media platforms.

Using Twitter to grow your business requires a reciprocal relationship.

For example, if you have a bricks and mortar store, post your Twitter handle prominently on-site and offer Twitter exclusive promotions to your followers.

You can use Twitter for customer service purposes and take care of any customer issues in real-time.

Post your Twitter profile anywhere that it may draw attention. Some successful business owners run contests that are only available if you follow the brand on Twitter. Running your own contest can boost engagement and create new followers that are interested in your brand.

Social media platforms can instantly promote your personal brand or business to an audience you may never have connected with in any other way. You may not have a famous last name or astronomically high follower counts.

But with some work, you can grow your following to where you can reach a huge target audience and grow to heights you may never have imagined. .