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How to increase Twitter followers: 55 free tactics that actually work

Tips and tactics to gain more Twitter followers like never before.

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by owlead

Do you want to know how to increase Twitter followers?

You came to the right place!

We’re in a crowded social media era where everyone is playing for the attention of their audience and Twitter isn’t an exception, if you have a Twitter profile, you’ll definitely want to know how to increase Twitter followers.

The larger the audience you can grab, the broader your message and the chances to promote your product, the right way!

Although quantity is seen as a vanity metric, if you don’t work on quality, you’re doing just half of the work.

Quality and Quantity have to work together for you on social media.

Having a massive Twitter following will pay back for a reason:

Twitter isn’t cutting your reach, you’ll publish a message on Twitter and your entire following base will be notified without spending a single dollar.

You can’t say the same about Facebook and Instagram, organic reach on those places is dead.

Now, the most important fact about this article is the methodology we used to craft this post:

We’ve analyzed the top 10 articles that mention over 165 tactics on how to increase Twitter followers and we’ve read them carefully, made a deep analysis, cut the fat, add our experience and put our angle on each of them.

Each tactic to get real Twitter followers is classified inside one of the following categories: Profile tips, Tweeting tips, Engagement tips, Promote tips, and Website/Blog tips.

Definitely, this piece of content will help you get the most out of your account and have a business around your Twitter profile, but I won’t lie to you: getting Twitter followers instantly and free it’s not possible unless you are already famous.

So, without further ado stay with me to learn how to increase Twitter followers free and fast and in the right way!

Profile Tips

Tweeting Tips

Engagement Tips

Promote Tips

Website/Blog Tips

 

 

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Perfecting your profile to increase Twitter followers

This is the first thing that a potential follower will see, it has to be perfectly crafted to be attractive enough to make your potential push the Follow button.

Let’s dive in on the tactics to create a winning Twitter profile and start getting Twitter followers like never before.

Let’s begin with the first Twitter marketing strategy:

1. Write an engaging bio

Let’s start from the beginning, your bio.

Your Twitter profile is everything.

Would you follow someone with some random stuff on his/her profile bio?

Unless it’s a public figure, probably not!

So, you have to work on your bio, it has to:

  • Be real.
  • Be professional.
  • Use common/natural words from your industry.
  • Set yourself apart from the rest of your peers.

What’s the bottom line of a winning Twitter bio?

To convince others to follow you and let them know that you have something valuable to share.

Being real is also to be funny. In a social media world that’s crowded with bots go ahead and show the world that there is a real human behind your account.

Takeaway: work on your bio, don’t just put random things on it.

2. Call yourself an authority

Yes, you have seen it in other profiles:

  • Marketing Guru
  • 30 under 30 Forbes
  • CEO of Acme Brand
  • And so on…

Are they bragging about their status? For sure!

But…is this worth it to get more followers on Twitter? Hell yeah!

According to Hubspot data scientist Dan Zarrella, using words that demonstrate authority in your bio correlates with more followers than average users:

How to increase Twitter followers perfecting your bio

Takeaway: don’t be shy about your skills and call yourself an authority in your area of expertise.

3. Unique profile image

Don’t be lazy, don’t use the first picture you have on your phone gallery.

If this is your personal account and you want to leverage your brand, try to use a passport photo with a natural pose.

On the other hand, if you are working on an account for a brand/product, your logo has to be perfectly distinguishable inside the available space of 400 x 400 pixels.

When your logo is composed of an icon and a tagline, leave the tagline off and focus on putting your isolated icon as profile image with a solid background.

4. Standout with your header image

Get the most out of the available space of 1500 x 500 pixels to tell a bit more about you, your brand or other channels where people can find you.

Use cover image to get more Twitter followers

Both spaces: profile image and header image, are trial and error spaces.

Create, try, adjust, try it again and so on.

5. Add a location

The location input on Twitter is free to use field, you can put whatever you want here, we recommend you to use it to increase the visits to your website/offer/content:

Get more Twitter followers and visits to your site using the localization

 

Or you can use it normally and let the world know where you or your company is located:

Stripe's Cover Image

 

6. Pin your best tweet

This is an excellent place to show your audience what your content is about and at the same time show them that your tweets are engaging.

People will be more attracted to follow and interact with your account if you have a pinned tweet with tons of likes, retweets, and replies.

Pin your best tweet to get more Twitter followers

If you are using this place to promote your website, a landing page, or any other content – place a trackable URL (eg: using UTM parameters) so you can keep track of the traffic that particular link is generating.

Takeaway: pin a winning tweet that has organic engagement and a clear call to action.

7. Customize your color scheme

First impressions matter: it takes 0.05 seconds for a person to decide if they will stay or leave a website.

Now, if you work on the visual composition of your profile, more people will tend to stay on your profile and that will correlate with more followers in the long run.

Use the color scheme to adapt the Twitter profile to your brand palette. It will look nicer and that will lead to more followers and conversions 😎.

Takeaway: use the color scheme options on Twitter to craft an awesome profile.

8. Get verified with Twitter Blue

Well, we have to put this tactic on the fence for now.

Some years ago verifying an account was quite simple, just a couple of steps and you were there.

Now the Twitter verification process is on pause, so stay tuned for more soon.

Of course, you have the Twitter blue route, and that’s an amazing way where you can let people know that you take your Twitter account seriously.

Tweet like a pro to get more Twitter followers

All right, all the passive steps you can take with your profile to get followers on Twitter fast are covered in the points above.

Now starts one of the most important parts of gaining more followers on Twitter.

You can have the best-optimized profile on Twitter, but here’s the deal:

If you aren’t creating awesome content and following the next tactics, your audience won’t grow!

Stay with me for 25 super, actionable tactics you can follow to gain followers while tweeting.

9. Define your audience

It’s good to have a large audience on Twitter, but it’s even better to have a targeted audience to engage with.

Start defining your audience:

  • Who are they
  • What tone shall you use
  • What topics you’ll be sharing with them

Ideally, you should develop a buyer persona for your brand.

You might be wondering: great, but what is a buyer persona?

It’s a personal, fictitious story description to put you in the shoes of your potential buyers.

When you create your character, you can include: name, age, marital status, job, daily habits and behaviors, goals and challenges, and how can you help him achieve those goals – especially what are they looking for on Twitter.

Speaking to the right audience, and in the best way possible, will make a difference and can help you get more followers on Twitter.

10. Add value

“Post great content” is one of the most repeated phrases on the internet.

Don’t take me wrong, you have to post great content, but repeating anything like a robot won’t make you create great content.

Have you asked yourself what is great content?

A photo of your cat is probably awesome, but is that content relevant to your audience?

This is the very first question you have to ask before you even start to write a tweet:

Am I adding value to my audience with this tweet?

If it’s a Yes, then you can keep going with the rest of the tactics below.

Takeaway: every day challenge yourself with analyzing the worthiness of the content you share for your audience.

11. Share less about yourself

This is one of the most common mistakes that every Twitter user makes, especially when you’re first getting started.

Dan Zarrella studied the correlation between self-reference and followers:

Self-reference tweets doesn't help you get more Twitter followers

Like with all things in life, if you want to receive – you have to provide, and Twitter isn’t an exception to this rule.

Gary Vaynerchuck has a book called: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook where he uncovers the tactics to tell your story in a noisy social media world.

If you aren’t familiar with boxing, the title stands for:

Jab (Give), Jab (Give), Jab (Give), Right Hook (Ask for attention).

And on Twitter, it could be something like this:

Jab (Retweet), Jab (tweet another’s article), Jab (tweet with a mention), Right hook (tweet about your product)

 

Credits: FightMediocrity

Takeaway: share another’s content 3-4 times before asking for attention.

12. Reshare other people’s content

Everything is about giving to receive.

If you’ve already mastered this skill on a day-to-day basis you’ll have leverage over the average Twitter user.

Giving to others on Twitter means sharing other people’s content:

  • Tweet links from others.
  • Retweet others, not just your content.
  • Reply to others.
  • Give likes.

Giving to others will unlock and embrace the reciprocity law and:

  1. Your account will be noticed.
  2. Your tweets will have more chances to get shared
  3. You’ll gain Twitter followers in the process.

13. Tweet frequently & avoid tweeting too much

145 million DAU (daily active users) create 500 million tweets a day.

That’s a huge amount of content where your 280 character tweets have to stand out and leave a mark.

Twitter doesn’t have filter criteria, so all the tweets of your followers will be in chronological order in your feed waiting for you to scroll.

 

According to a study from Nathan Ellering of Coschedule where he analyzed 14 Social Media Frequency Studies:

15 Tweets a day is recommended by experts and backed by data.

With all the facts on Social Media, there isn’t a single rule for all. So, you have to find your sweet spot of tweets per day for your audience/industry.

  • Start warming up with at least 3 a day and increase till you find that your engagement starts to drop off and you are losing followers for tweeting too much.
  • 51 is the amount considered too much in a day according to Nathan’s study.

Takeaway: find your best tweet frequency – you have plenty of room to play around with between 3 to 51 tweets a day.

14. Avoid bursts of updates

What does it mean to do a burst of updates? Tweeting too much in a short period of time.

A Study from Korean research, where they analyzed 1.2 million Korean-speaking users for 51 days and also conducted interviews with 22 Korean users, arrived at this conclusion:

Bursts of Updates is the principal reason for unfollowing.

tweeting too much doesn't help you get more Twitter followers

But here is a crazy thing:

Growing an audience doesn’t mean anything without retaining that audience.

To prevent your followers from unfollowing you, the first thing you have to do is avoid a burst of updates.

How? Stay with me for the next tactic…

15. Schedule your tweets

We’ve spoken about two directly correlated challenges: Tweet frequently, but avoid tweeting too much & Avoid bursts of updates.

Also, there is another related time-based tactic that we haven’t mentioned: tweet at the right time.

You won’t get more followers on Twitter if you are tweeting while your audience is sleeping or not paying attention.

According to research conducted by Sprout, the best times to post on social media for brands are weekdays in the early and late afternoons.

 

Tweet at the right time to increase Twitter followers

So, you have to take care of these three main variables while tweeting:

  • Tweet frequently
  • Avoid bursts of updates
  • Tweet at the right time

How can you accomplish those three at the same time?

Let’s suppose that you want to share 24 tweets a day (that’s a tweet per hour) and you have to maximize engagement and avoid a burst of updates.

Two options:

  1. Become a full-time Social Media Manager.
  2. Use a tool to schedule your tweets at the right time.

When automating things you always have to ask the following:

Am I adding value by completing this task manually?

Are you adding value by pushing the Tweet button at different times of your day?

Definitely not!

Takeaway: organize and schedule your tweets to be shared and use a tool like Buffer, Sprout, or CoSchedule.

16. Don’t repeat the same tweets

As one of the efforts from Twitter, to prevent bots from harming the social media stream with spam, in January 2018 they rolled out a platform update.

They introduced changes related to automation for those that scheduled tweets to be posted later or manage multiple Twitter accounts.

Here are the main three changes they introduced then:

  • Do not (and do not allow your users to) simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts.
  • Do not (and do not allow your users to) simultaneously perform actions such as Likes, Retweets, or follows from multiple accounts.
  • The use of any form of automation (including scheduling) to post identical or substantially similar content, or to perform actions such as Likes or Retweets, across many accounts that have authorized your app (whether or not you created or directly control those accounts) is not permitted.

Takeaway: refreshing and repurposing content should be one of your priorities on Twitter, but you have to be careful not to fall in the copy-paste trap.

17. Use hashtags

Using hashtags is one of the ways to be in the loop of an industry or mainstream topic on Twitter.

The use of a hashtag expands the reach of your tweet beyond your audience. You can reach users outside your current audience who are interested in a hot topic.

According to this study of Linchpinseo, not only will your tweets be more visible they will have more engagement too:

Use hashtags to increase Twitter followers

Takeaway: use relevant hashtags for more reach and engagement, which will correlate with more followers for your account.

18. Give special offers and discounts

What are the main reasons for someone to follow your brand?

According to a study conducted by Nielsen and reposted by Twitter, some of the most important reasons are:

#2 People expect to be notified of special offers and promotions (51%)

#8 To get freebies (33%)

Bear in mind that followers are expecting more from you than just informational tweets.

They want to feel special for following your brand, so you’ll have to deliver.

Takeaway: create special promotions, freebies, and discounts for your Twitter audience. That will help you augment your reach and that means more followers at the end of the day.

19. Share positively

In a study from Dan Zarrella about how factors like conversations, self-reference, and avatars affect follow count, he found that negative remarks correlate with a lower follower count.

tweet positively to increase Twitter followers

Credit: Buffer

When talking about the quality of your audience, positivity matters.

If you are a downer when sharing – you are setting the tone for communication with you and/or your brand.

Don’t expect to receive compliments when you are just giving negative messages to your audience.

Positivity is a way of living, embrace it with your Twitter account.

Takeaway: always share positively. When giving support through Twitter, start every message with a positive message (“Thanks for reaching out”, “Thanks for your message”) and close with some positive vibes (“Enjoy your day”, “Have a nice week”).

20. Use visuals

This is one of the most widely known tactics to get more engagement on Twitter.

Let’s do a brief recap on why using visuals can help you get more followers on Twitter:

  • Grabs attention – visuals get noticed among the rest of the Tweets
  • Faster recognition – it’s 60,000 times faster than mentally decoding text
  • More memorable – if a relevant image is paired with a message, people retain 65% of the information three days later (Hubspot)
  • Greater engagement – compelling visual content generates more views
  • More retweets, favs & clicks – tweets with images receive 18 percent more clicks than those without. (study by Buffer)

tweet with images to increase retweets and twitter followers as a result

If you aren’t design-savvy, use tools like Canva, Pablo, or Design Wizard that will help you out with creating visual content. Want to take your videos for social media to another level? Try CreatorKit and add animated text to videos for your social media posts for free.

Takeaway: try to use visuals in most of your tweets and vary the types of visuals to avoid boring your audience with the same visual resource every time.

21. Ask questions – but don’t ask too much

Asking questions is one of the best ways to spark interest on Twitter.

Either asking for feedback, recommendations, or just for the sake of learning about something in an area that you aren’t an expert – you’ll see a spike in engagement when using this resource.

You can create polls:

Twitter Polls

Or ask your audience directly:

ask your audience on Twitter

Now, be aware that over-using this tactic can be harmful to your account and you can create the opposite stimulus: losing followers for asking too much.

Remember to provide value several times before asking for your audience’s attention.

Takeaway: ask questions wisely and with purpose.

22. Tag other users

If you are adding value, sharing, or asking for the opinion of others, don’t hesitate to tag them.

Don’t underestimate the value of tagging someone on Twitter.

Even influencers with millions of followers need to engage with their audience and the next message to be responded to, liked or retweeted could be yours.

engage with influencers

When an account with tons of followers interacts with your tweet, it could appear on the feed of their followers and that means more exposure for your account, and as a result, more potential followers seeing your content.

Takeaway: tag every time you share content or ask the opinion of others.

23. Tweet concisely

Although you have a 280 character limit, it doesn’t mean that you have to use them all.

In fact, according to a study conducted by Buddy Media on the retweets by the length of tweet shows than tweets with 71-100 characters show an increase of 17% compared to larger tweets.

Tweet concisely will help you increase your Twitter followers

Takeaway: impose on yourself the old limit of 140 characters to create shorter tweets to maximize engagement.

24. Edit your tweets

No, it isn’t possible to edit your tweets after they have been published.

That’s why you have to be cautious and try to have more than one pair of eyes approving your content before it’s posted.

You’ll save lots of headaches by avoiding dumb, but common, typos, errors, and broken links when creating tons of tweets to schedule.

Takeaway: involve more than one person and use a tool like Gain to handle your content approval process.

25. A/B test your tweets

You’ll be amazed by the things you realize when you test things out.

You don’t have an A/B test tool for Twitter, but since you can (and should) refresh and repurpose content, you can try different texts or images to communicate the same message and compare engagement results.

Check these examples:

Ikea tweet

Ikea tweet alternative

Remember that posting on different days of the week and times of the day will also give you different results for your tweet engagement.

When A/B testing things, try to keep the day of the week and hour of the day fixed to avoid different results influenced by these variables.

hottsuite a/b 1

hootsuite-2

 

Takeaway: don’t make assumptions, test them!

26. Tweet about current events

Things go viral all the time on Twitter and you can intervene in conversations with your angle, joke, or opinion by hijacking news and current events.

ces blackout tweet

Now, when doing this, remember to use trending hashtags to provide context and also to have more exposure with your tweets.

When things go viral people monitor trending hashtags regarding that topic and you can get in the loop.

Takeaway: monitor hot topics and trending hashtags to intervene.

27. Retweet yourself

Seems pretty normal and common now, but it wasn’t so long ago that you weren’t able to go over your own words and repurpose your best tweets.

In February 2018 Twitter introduced a feature that lets you retweet your tweets.

Alfred Lua from Buffer conducted an experiment to determine if retweeting your top tweets generates more engagement.

The conclusion? Hell yeah!

Check Alfred’s experiment metrics and see how retweeting old tweets can generate:

  • 122% more impressions
  • 87% more engagement
  • 90% more clicks
  • 14% more replies
Retweet yourself will lead to more engagement and will help you increase Twitter followers

Credit: Buffer

Takeaway: consider retweeting your tweets as part of your strategy to create content.

28. Inspirational quotes

According to a study conducted by Twitter:

Quotes get a 19% boost in Retweets

Recently we’ve seen a revival of quotes without images by accounts like Naval:

Naval's Tweet

 

Or Sahil Lavingia:

Sahil's Tweet

You can go further and combine quotes with images, tools like Pablo from Buffer can help you with creating stunning visual quotes.

Takeaway: share quotes that resonate with you or your brand, let your audience know more about your mindset.

29. Use simple language

Explaining complicated things using simple language is one of the most underrated abilities you can develop.

Using simple words means reaching a larger audience with your message: the ones educated in your field and others that are just starting in your industry.

Always remember:

“If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it.”

Takeaway: use simple words to tweet.

30. Recycle powerful content

Engaging evergreen content could, and should, be one of the cornerstones of your content strategy on Twitter.

If you follow our tactics, you’ll have to create a vast amount of content to share on Twitter every month.

But here’s the deal: if you focus on creating really valuable content, that content will be reusable in the future.

To recycle powerful content remember that you can’t copy-paste your tweets, but you can use some of the tactics we shared above:

Retweet your best tweets, A/B test your tweets, or find new angles to reshare them.

Also, bear in mind that a single post could be used for a vast amount of tweets with different angles.

With this post you’re reading we can generate at least a tweet per topic (profile, tweeting, engagement, promote, website/blog, others) and much more.

Takeaway: recycle powerful content in your Twitter strategy.

31. Include CTAs

All of your tweets have to have a goal. If not – you aren’t taking your job seriously.

When the goal of your tweet is to engage some action from your followers, you have to make it crystal clear with a call to action.

Some of the most common CTA’s are:

  • Like
  • Click
  • Download
  • Retweet
  • Follow

According to this study from Twitter where they analyzed 20,000 Promoted Tweets randomly sampled from a three-month period, the most effective call to actions are:

#1: Ask for a download – ask people to download, accompanied by a link, increased URL clicks by an average of 13%

#2: Ask for a Retweet – promoted Tweets in timelines, with an ask to retweet, increased retweets by an average of 311%.

#3: Ask for a follow – promoted Tweets in timelines that asked for a follow increased follows by an average of 258%

Indeed, you can’t extrapolate 100% with these results for organic tweets, but you can consider them as a tendency to be considered.

Takeaway: let your audience know what you want them to do.

32. Live-tweet events

This is one of the first and most valuable uses of the Twitter platform.

Be cautious and keep these things in mind while live-tweeting events:

  • Let your followers know that you’ll be live-tweeting an event so they can get involved in the discussion when it happens.
  • Use threads, so you won’t make a burst of updates. When tweeting in threads just the first and the last ones are visible to your followers. If they want more, they will have to expand the thread.
  • Use the correct and official hashtags – in some events the community creates parallel hashtags that aren’t as active as the official one.
  • Take pictures so your audience can have a better experience and feel like they are in the event with you.
    Don’t tweet every phrase mentioned by the speakers. Add value!

Takeaway: get more exposure by live-tweeting interesting events for your target audience.

The days where you need a shortener service to cut and hide your UTM’s on Twitter are gone.

Now Twitter has its shortener system and will cut off all of the links you share.

Based on this study by David from Rebrandly, branded links obtain +39 Click Through Rate compared to generic URLs:

use branded links to get more CTR

Takeaway: use branded links to obtain more CTR.

Engage your audience to gain Twitter followers

As you may notice, not all tactics are just about you.

We’re going to embrace ourselves on one of the most interesting and fulfilling Twitter marketing tactics.

100% mandatory for your Twitter account.

Like in any other human relationship – you have to give to receive.

Below you’ll find tactics to engage with other accounts and see how they can help you get followers on Twitter.

34. Follow other users

Following is what brought us here in the first place, so without following, Twitter wouldn’t exist.

Following other users allows you to see their content, interact and be part of their Twitter tribe.

Also, here is a crazy thing:

“Following is the most effective and affordable way to promote your business and gain real Twitter followers.”

You might be wondering, how does this work? Simple…

When you follow someone, they will be notified and the intrigue will lead them to view your account.

If you’ve done everything we mentioned above, your account seems promising and thanks to the reciprocity law, they will follow back.

Now, you can do this process manually every day or you can take it to another level automate Twitter following/unfollowing process to gain real and targeted followers and increase your follow back ratio.

Here is where our Twitter automation tool comes in handy.

We’ve been in the Twitter growth industry since the beginning of the hype.

Our app to gain Twitter followers has been evolving to help marketer folks like you build a real and targeted audience.

Twitter Growth Service

Takeaway: Go ahead and get the most out of our 10-day free trial period where you can get a taste of how Owlead can help you get more followers on Twitter than ever before.

35. Unfollow people who don’t follow you

We’ve mentioned the most effective tactic to get followers on Twitter, follow other accounts.

But, having a massive number that you’re following isn’t a good sign for your account:

  • Accounts with more following than followers tend to attract fewer followers.
  • Could be seen as a spammy account.
  • Twitter monitors the following/follower ratio and can temporarily suspend your account.

If you’ve decided to use our Twitter follow bot, you probably already know that Owlead handles the unfollowing tasks automatically without your intervention.

But, if you’re planning to manually follow accounts you’ll need a tool like Mass Follow for Twitter that will help you with purging your following from time to time without hassle.

36. Engage with replies

You can (and should) use a Twitter marketing tool for tweeting and following.

But, one thing you shouldn’t automate is the engagement with your audience.

Monitoring and replying to mentions should be performed daily.

Bots and automation are all around, that’s why it’s now more important than ever to show your personal touch with your interactions.

Check this example and see the positive impact we’ve made for this Twitter user that thought we were a bot:

37. Consider a quote tweet over a retweet

Other users are following you for your expertise.

When sharing content from others and retweeting, go a step further and try to add your angle/comment/input to the story.

Adding a quote-level tweet also has a visual impact.

When you give a retweet, your followers will see the original tweet, and your visibility will be in the You Retweeted:

Quote a tweet instead of retweet to standout

But, when adding a quote, your account now owns the conversation:

quote a tweet over a retweet

Takeaway: quote a tweet over a retweet.

38. Don’t automate direct messages

A sale comes after a buyer’s journey ends, and that happens when you’ve earned the trust and confidence of your audience.

Now, tons of accounts are automating direct messages and expecting that someone will consume what they have to sell without generating mutual trust.

When someone follows you, it’s taking them a step closer to purchasing what you have to offer, but they’re still far away from the end of the funnel.

A set of interactions, education, and exchange between you and your followers must occur before someone commits to buying what you have to sell.

Check these bad examples:

Owelad DMs

So, expecting to be able to automate your entire sales workflow through Twitter is a bit naive.

You can automate the promotion and use Twitter growth hacking Twitter, but engagement is an important part of building trust between you and your audience – take it seriously.

Takeaway: don’t automate DMs.

39. Participate in Follow Friday

Classics are classics, Follow Friday was created in 2009 as a way to promote other accounts.

micah baldwin started ff

As time passes, the #FF habit started to be misused and the popular hashtag started to be crowded with self-promotion and not-so-valuable content.

If you are tweeting honest #FF, the accounts you mention will notice your good vibes.

Takeaway: let’s keep #FF alive!

40. Monitor and respond to keywords in your niche

Social media is crowded with good and bad: comments, opinions, and reviews.

Users tend to share the love and hate over Twitter and they don’t tag brands every time they tweet.

So you have to be a step ahead of monitoring important keywords for your brand and niche.

These are the three types of keywords you should be monitoring:

Branded keywords
Monitor your keywords, like the name of your brand and/or your product so you can jump right into any negative or positive feedback.

Every time a user shares a negative comment – feedback should be addressed by you. Show your audience that you care about what people say about your brand/product and don’t be ashamed to take responsibility if you screwed up.

dove tweet

Industry Keywords
Also, you can monitor important keywords in your industry and look for Twitter users that are searching for a solution to their problem that could be addressed by your product.

Competitor’s keywords
Monitor your competitor’s keyword to find unsatisfied customers that could be happier using your service.

Keeping track of keywords falls in the should be automated chapter of our tactics.

Takeaway: use tools like Brand24 to never miss a mention on Twitter. Jump right into any negative/positive comment for an opportunity to conquer a new customer.

41. Host or join a Twitter chat

Twitter users love Twitter chats. That’s it, and we understand them, they spike curiosity.

Twitter chats are an excellent way for your account to gain exposure with like-minded peers and position you or your brand as an industry leader in your field.

But, you may be asking: what is a Twitter chat and how does it work?

A Twitter chat is an activity held by a host. The host will ask the audience a question about a topic or encourage the audience to tweet questions and once the host receives replies, will tweet in response to.

These chats usually run for a short period and have a hashtag associated to follow the conversation.

Some advice for hosted Twitter chats:

  • Let your audience know you’ll be hosting or joining a Twitter chat so they can join or avoid your timeline during that period of time.
  • Use the official hashtag to keep the conversation flowing.
  • Don’t hijack the Twitter chats, let’s tweet too.
  • Avoid posting links to your products in a Twitter chat.

Twitter chats are a great way to engage and gain some name in the industry. Don’t ignore them they can be the key to your growth.

42. Make public and private Twitter lists

Twitter lists are a great tool to have separate feeds of tweets based on your interests.

Did you know that when you include someone in a public Twitter list, that person will be notified and will notice that you care about his/her content?

Remember to use descriptive and flattering names for your public lists to make your new list members feel special.

How Twitter lists help you get Twitter followers

Mystery shopping works on any channel. Want to follow every tweet from your competitors from the shadows? Use a private Twitter list.

Members of private Twitter lists won’t know that you’re following their tweets and won’t be notified that they’ve been added.

Takeaway: use public Twitter lists to draw user’s attention, and private lists to follow in hidden mode.

43. Collaborate with influencers

Influencers are there and you have to try to leverage your brand exposure with their audience.

When collaborating with influencers – we aren’t just talking about celebrity accounts with massive followings on Twitter like Drake, Kardashian’s or any other public figure.

According to this study by HelloSociety, it’s more effective (+60% engagement) to partner with Micro-Influencers than with highly popular accounts.

Some of the ways you can collaborate with influencers could be partnering to create unique content about your brand:

Nic's tweet

Or, if you are on a low budget, you can create content that grabs attention and could be mentioned by influencers:

casei's tweet

Takeaway: use influencers to leverage and give validation to your content/brand.

44. Use Twitter Analytics

Crafting what you think is good content doesn’t mean that it will be good content for your audience.

What you can’t measure, you can’t improve.

Knowing which tweets are resonating more with your audience is key to keep pushing content, engaging with more potential followers, and growing your audience on Twitter.

Twitter has a proprietary tool that will help you with keeping track of the most important metrics for your account and understand which content is performing best:

  • Profile Impressions
  • Profile visits
  • Mentions
  • Follower growth
  • Tweet impressions
  • Tweet engagement
  • Audience demographics
  • and more…

Takeaway: embrace analytics to understand what content is performing better with your audience.

45. Be prepared to manage a crisis or problem

Nowadays, no one is safe from a social media problem or crisis.

Even though you may not see it coming, you should be prepared to know how to handle one.

Some quick tips to keep in mind:

  • Reply – Don’t ignore negative feedback and comments on social media. Take action and apologize (if necessary) as soon as possible.
  • Avoid arguing – Arguing offline is challenging, arguing on social media is even worse!
  • Have a plan – create and share with your communications team a crisis plan to all be on the same page before something wrong happens.
  • Double authentication – Activate double authentication to prevent hackers from attacking your account.
  • Stop all scheduled posts – if the problem is big enough to take all the attention of your brand, stop all general communication till the crisis is solved.

Don’t be shy, Promote your account

Already creating stunning content and engaging with other users, you are down the stretch to get more followers on Twitter!

Now it’s time to work on propagating your content to give a boost to your followers.

46. Don’t use Twiter Ads instead, do this

Advertising is the final aim of Twitter as a company – that’s the core of their business and if you want to pay – you can purchase and run ads with different orientations:

  • Awareness – Promote your tweets to maximize your reach.
  • Tweet engagements – Promote your tweets to get more retweets, likes, and replies.
  • Followers – Promote your account to grow your Twitter following.
  • Website clicks – Promote your website to get more traffic.
  • App installs – Promote your mobile app to get more downloads.

If you want to attract new followers, you’ll have to run a Followers campaign and have a large wallet to spend at least $2 (US dollars) per new follower.

What affordable alternative do you have? Applying an auto-follow strategy using a Twitter auto follower!

Owlead: The Best Twitter Auto Follower Tool.

Start 15 Day Free Trial

Our very own Twitter growth service that helps you gain real, targeted and organic Twitter followers on autopilot. Increase engagement. Meet the most affordable way to increase your twitter followers. Less than 1 minute to set up.

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Here’s a crazy thing, our competes with Twitter Ads and based on an experiment we conducted Owlead is 4000% less expensive than gaining Twitter followers with ads:

A gained follower with Owlead cost on average $0.048

Want to try it for yourself? Run an experiment on our platform with our free 10-day trial today and calculate the cost per follower with us.

Owlead is a Twitter growth service to automate the following and unfollowing process and to gain real and targeted Twitter followers.

How do we target your audience? While you create a campaign on our platform you can use the available filter by:

  • Target Account
  • Keywords in bio
  • Language
  • Localization

So, if you want to target Twitter advertising users living in Miami, you can configure a campaign with us with the following criteria:

  • Target account: @twitter (followers of this account)
  • Keywords in bio: advertising, ads, campaign manager
  • Language: English
  • Localization: Miami, Florida, MIA

Owlead will follow and unfollow when necessary and attract targeted Twitter followers on your behalf.

Takeaway: don’t leave money on the table, give us a try and start saving money while gaining real and targeted Twitter followers.

47. Don’t buy followers (fake or real)

Growing the number of followers just for the sake of having a big number isn’t healthy for your account and you’ll only lose money in the long run.

Most of the Twitter followers you can buy don’t have engagement, won’t interact with your account, won’t buy your product or service, and will be deactivated sooner or later.

Takeaway: don’t waste your money buying followers (grow your account in the proper way using Owlead too)

48. Ask for retweets

As we’ve seen above:

Asking directly in a tweet for a retweet can increase retweets by an average of 311%.

So, asking for retweets can skyrocket your reach if you use it the right way.

Takeaway: ask for retweets when you need a boost in your reach, but don’t overuse this tactic.

49. Add your contacts to Twitter

You are already part of a community outside Twitter and some of your colleagues, family, friends, and anyone you may know could be hidden behind some fancy Twitter @handle.

Upload and unlock the contacts you already have on Twitter, follow them and they will probably follow you back.

50. Promote your account offline

There are plenty of ways to promote your account offline to gain new Twitter followers – here you’ll find some ideas:

  • Emails – Include your Twitter handle in your email signature.
  • Store – Include a sign in your store window, encouraging customers to follow you.
  • Business Cards – Add your Twitter handle on your business cards.
  • Marketing Material – Include your Twitter handle on all the printable/promotional materials like magazines, posters, brochures, etc.
  • Presentations – when crafting presentations, add your Twitter info.
  • Active Search – search and actively follow friends that you’ve just met.

Takeaway: promote your Twitter account outside of Twitter.

51. Leverage your other feeds

Every social media channel has its audience, but almost every human being manages more than one social media channel – 7 on average.

Now, if you have a large audience on other social media channels, some of them will probably be on Twitter and can help you increase your followers.

Takeaway: use your current feeds on other channels to let your audience know you’re on Twitter and offer a link to follow you.

Website/Blog Tips

The chances that you own a website or blog are high, so here are the most important recommendations for website owners to gain Twitter followers.

52. Embed Twitter content in your website/posts

Twitter already has a tool that lets you create content to insert into your website/blog to spread the word about your Twitter profile, actions, and content.

You’ll be able to add to your website:

  • Collection of tweets
  • A single tweet
  • A profile
  • A public list
  • A moment
  • A likes timeline
  • A handle to be followed
  • A hashtag

Takeaway: let the world know that you are crafting amazing content on Twitter and make it dead simple to follow your account or share your message.

53. Add tweetable quotes within your blog posts

Bite-size tweetable quotes are the most shared content from posts we see every day on Twitter.

Tweetable quotes to get more Twitter followers

Credit: BloggerJet

You have to identify those attractive phrases that can be transformed into quotes in your posts and with the help of some online tools, create catchy tweetable quotes.

More tweets from your posts mean more exposure to your content and will result in more followers and visits to your site.

Takeaway: create bite-size quotes in your blog posts.

As you may notice, in this post we’ve used several resources from other marketing influencers and it wasn’t by accident.

Creating unique, engaging, and original content is pretty awesome, but in most of your posts, you’ll need to support your conclusions or angles with content that was already addressed by influencers in your niche.

Here’s the kicker: influencers have larger/different audiences than yours (that’s why they are INFLUENCERS ha!).

If you do your homework, you can use their audience to your advantage.

You may be wondering, “How can I use an influencer audience for my benefit?”

Everyone (even influencers) want and need, their message to be shared – you can help them with:

  • A mention in your post.
  • A backlink to their site.
  • A tweet with a mention.

They will often be flattered and with some help from the reciprocity law, you’ll have a higher chance to receive a shoutout.

Give to receive.

Takeaway: use influencer’s content in your posts and let them know about it on Twitter.

55. Use Twitter Cards

Twitter cards let you personalize how a shared link of a post from your site will look like on Twitter.

Just by using simple HTML tags your content can stand out from the rest of the links shared.

Implement the Summary Card with Large Image for your site and posts.

You’ll be able to personalize:

Title: 70 characters
Description: 200 characters
Image: at least 280 x 150 pixels and no more than 1MB

twitter aniversary tweet

To implement it, just add the following HTML markup to your posts:

<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@yourwebsite”>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@yourtwitterhandle”>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”your title”>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”your description.”>
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”https://where-your-image-is-hosted/name.jpg“>

 

You make it to the end and I hope you are gaining Twitter followers already, we are flattered!

Now is your turn, do you know some tactics on how to get Twitter followers that are missing? Let us know!

 

 

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