Twitter is unique amongst all of the different social media platforms out there nowadays. How can you be certain that you’re using it properly? And if you’re using it for business purposes, how can you do that effectively?
One of the best ways to ensure that you’re getting the exposure and connections that you need is by finding new and innovative ways to get more Twitter followers. How can you be sure that you get more followers and keep them around? This can be quite a challenge, but here are some tips that can help you to get things rolling.
Don’t Forget to Tweet Regularly
Twitter is a fast-moving social media site, and it can be quite the challenge to keep up with everything that goes on with it. Because of that, you need to be certain that you are publishing on a fairly regular basis.
This keeps people in the loop with what you’re doing and ensures that people have the opportunity to see what you’re doing. That regular tweeting is going to help people see what you’re doing, day in and day out.
Establish Yourself as an Expert
As with any online platform, you will always get more followers by simply establishing yourself as an expert! If people know who you are and what you know, then they’re more likely to continue coming back for more information from you in the future.
How do you establish yourself as an expert? Share articles from industry leaders. Share information about what it is that you do and be willing to answer questions from your audience. Helpful information always creates more followers in the long run.
Be Aware of Optimal Posting Times
One of the most difficult challenges of growing your Twitter community is knowing when they’re online. There are some prime times where your posts are most likely to get traction – for example, around lunchtime EST, or around the time where people are getting home from a commute.
Most of the time, you are going to want to stick to the times as they are in your time zone. If you’re looking to reach a worldwide audience, then you are going to want to go ahead and do some research on the best times of day. Usually, if you post 2-3 times a day, you’ll hit everyone that you want to try and hit.
Use Hashtags Liberally – But Not Too Liberally
Hashtags are one of the ways that you can “sort” through everything that you see on Twitter. It helps people with like interests to connect with one another and makes it easier for you to get your name out there.
You want to use at least one hashtag on every post that you post. But, you can easily overdo hashtags, and that’s a really important thing to consider as you’re choosing a hashtag. Find something that correlates with what you are talking about, but not too specifically (or no one will see it).
Also, check out the trending hashtags. If what you’re posting on is tangentially related to any of the trending hashtags, be sure to use them. If not, then avoid them – if you’re not using correct hashtags, then people will likely stop following you or clicking on your posts.
Don’t use too many hashtags, either. A post that uses half of its characters on hashtags doesn’t have a lot of valuable information in it – so they’re not going to be acknowledged as often. You want to use a hashtag or two.
Photos and Videos are King!
We all love photos and videos. Think about what you look at the most often when you’re on social media – most of the time, it has a video or photo associated with it, right? You need to use that information in a manner that is helpful to you.
Photos and videos are going to be what draw people in. They tell a story, and they catch those people who aren’t likely to read a long Tweet about what it is that you’re doing on a specific day. Plus, it’s fun to use photos and videos in your storytelling.
If you use videos and photos, you want to be sure that you make them accessible. How do you do that? With videos, you want to close caption them, and try to describe them as much as possible. With pictures, you want to put a photo description of what is in the picture. This allows blind and deaf persons to access your content more easily than they could otherwise.
Bring in Followers that Aren’t on Twitter
It can be hard to get people’s attention when it comes to social media – especially if they aren’t on the social media that you’re trying to use! So, what can you do in order to get the portion of your audience that isn’t on Twitter right now?
Providing an experience that your potential audience will “want in on” can be a really great way to get some Twitter follows that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Whether that is through giveaways, Twitter followers only content, or other various means, you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to sorting out who may want to interact with your Twitter.
Be Deliberate with Your Profile
Your profile needs to be a warm and welcoming place. Let people know what you do and what you provide, but at the same time, be friendly about it. If you work with a particular population, let them know that. Use emojis and other things so that you can provide shorthand information.
You only have a handful of characters that you can use to get the message across, so be concise and let your potential audience know exactly what you have to offer to them. The more deliberate you are with your profile info, the more easily you’re going to connect with your audience.
Collaborate
Sometimes, your best bet is to connect with other professionals who are looking to reach a new audience, or that are in your industry but not a direct competitor. By collaborating with them, you will find that you’re reaching both audiences with new content and interesting Tweets.
More often than not, collaboration also makes it easier for you to meet new people in your industry, as well. It’s a helpful way to network – and good networking, in the long run, makes it that much easier to get more followers. It ends up saving everyone involved a lot of time when it comes to gaining an audience.
Reply to Followers and Those You Follow
Reply, reply, reply. One of the most essential parts of Twitter is the interaction. You need to be sure that you’re constantly connecting with your audience and doing so in conversations can go an exceptionally long way.
Imagine it as an ongoing conversation. Twitter is just one big conversation, with different people chiming in from time to time. It’s just in a public forum, with lots of voices. By replying to others, your voice is out there more and it is heard more clearly.
Obviously, you want to remain professional in all of your interactions, but there are a lot of ways in which you can interact with other people. By taking the time to do something outside of just posting to your page, it shows potential followers that you care about interaction and building community.
Retweet When It’s Appropriate
Are there people interacting with your content, or answering the questions that you’ve asked? Maybe you see something funny that matches with the industry that you’re in? Use that retweet button and let people know how much you appreciate their content.
Just because you’re a business or marketing account doesn’t mean that you have to stick to sales. Sometimes, the best time to catch views is to share what other people are doing. Those same people may get really excited about the fact that you shared their stuff, and let their audiences know!
Be Creative
When all is said and done, it comes down to one thing – you need to be creative. More often than not, you can show off your creativity and let people know that you are really thinking about what you produce.
In some instances, you may need to find someone that specializes in social media marketing to help you with creativity. You can learn a lot from these professionals and, if you’re willing to do so, you will get all sorts of results.
As with everything, getting more Twitter followers is going to take time. With so many new people joining Twitter all of the time, it’s really important to look and see what options you have available in order to reach out to different people.
Be creative and have fun with your social media, especially Twitter. If you’re innovative and thoughtful about it, then you are going to have a much easier time connecting with the right people and finding what you need in order to thrive as a business owner.
