How to Get More Followers on Twitter

Three Methods:  Becoming Follow-Worthy  Increasing Your Visibility  Increasing Your Followers Strategically 

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki said, "Truth be told, there are only two kinds of Twitter users: those that want more followers and those that lie." While this statement is controversial, many people do want more followers on Twitter. If you are reading this page, you might be one of them. Here is how you can greatly increase your follower count.

> Method 1 of 3: Becoming Follow-Worthy

  1. Work on your profile.  Make sure your profile is complete with an avatar that shows your face and a solid bio.   It's important that people know who you are and what you're interested in.

• The simplest and most personal way to go for an avatar is a photograph of your face looking straight into the lens. Avoid funny angles or having anything else in the photo. Crop it into a square, but don't shrink it down. You want people to be able to click on it and see the larger version.
• If you own a company and want to use your brand as your avatar instead of a photograph, this is perfectly acceptable. However, using random graphics or images as your avatar can give the impression of a face or spam account, so they are not recommended.
• Many people will read your Twitter bio before deciding whether to follow you. A good written bio can help you get much more followers than a poorly written bio.

  2. Compose interesting, funny or thought-provoking tweets.  Most potential followers will glance at your most recent tweets to see if you're worth following. Therefore, it stands to reason that the better your tweets, the more followers you'll gain.

• Add variety. Make sure you're tweeting on a variety of subjects and not just your personal thoughts or what you're doing at the moment. Talk about your hobbies and interests, share a piece of insightful advice, or post a photo of something cool to switch it up.
• Be interesting, transparent and provocative. Share intimate news about your life. If you can spin a good story, you might get readers addicted to the daily dramas of your everyday life.
• Post interesting links. Find the man bites dog story. Search the web voraciously for a nugget you can spin into a good tweet. Guy Kawasaki, who has over 100,000 followers, goes as far as paying employees to find buzzworthy stories for him to tweet. There are many websites you can scour for prime Tweeting material
• Post multimedia. Switching things up with pictures, videos and even sound clips here and there can make your posts more fun to follow.

3. Tweet often, at the right times of day.  Nobody wants to follow someone who never tweets, therefore it's important to remain consistently active on twitter. You should have a minimum of one post per day and ideally two posts per day to maximize your visibility in the Twitterverse.

• It's also important that you post your tweets at a time of day or night when the most people are active. No one will see your tweet or have the opportunity to follow you if you're always posting when they're asleep. The best times to tweet are before people go to work in the morning (pre-9am) and after they finish in the evening  (around 6pm).
• Make sure to take your time zone into account though. Most twitter users live in the US, so you will need to tailor your tweeting times to either East coast or West coast schedules.
• On the other hand, it's important not to inundate your existing followers with too many tweets, as this can fill up their feed and come across as spammy, which might cause them to unfollow you.

4. Use hashtags.  Using hashtags is a great way to connect to people with similar interests and to increase the visibility of your tweets.

• Add hashtags to your tweets and also create tweets based on hashtags that are popular on Twitter at the time (you can see these as "trends" on the left-hand side of your Twitter home page). This will maximize your tweet's exposure.
• However, like everything on Twitter, hashtags should be used in moderation. Just pick one or two relevant or amusing hashtags which add to the quality of your tweet. Don't just add hashtags onto words that appeared in the rest of your tweet, or include them just for the sake of it.

5. Follow everyone who follows you.  It might seem counter-intuitive to do this when you're focused on gaining followers, but it's a good practice because people who notice that you didn't follow them back might unfollow you. Like other social media sites, Twitter is a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" type of environment.

• Also, when you follow back, some people might respond to you publicly, which will give you some added exposure to their followers.
• If you're worried that you won't be able to keep up with that many people, you're right. Once you're following over 100 people, it'll be pretty much impossible to read all their updates. You'll become more selective in who/what you read.

> Method 2 of 3: Increasing Your Visibility

1. Direct people to your Twitter account. You can direct more people to your Twitter account by putting "Follow me on Twitter" links on your blog, e-mail, other social networking outlets, and across the web.

• That way, people who are already interested in what you're doing can easily find your Twitter Profile and follow you.
• Using graphics, such as a button or counter can also be more effective at catching attention and getting you more followers.

2. Try to get celebrities or famous people to follow you on Twitter. That will increase the chance that they will tweet at you or retweet one of your tweets, increasing the visibility of your Twitter account.

• You can get a celebrity's attention on Twitter by sending them an @message. An @message is a direct message which you can send to anyone, whether you're following them or not.
• Choose a celebrity (or at least someone with a ton of followers) to send an @message to. This message will appear on your profile page, so anyone who comes to scope you out will see who you've tweeted.
• If you're really lucky, the celebrity will reply to your message, retweet it, or maybe even follow you back. This will make your tweet visible to thousands or even millions of people, and undoubtedly gain you followers.
• Although this doesn't happen that often, it's worth sending a direct message or two everyday on the off-chance that it's gets retweeted. Remember, the funnier or more original the tweet is, the better the odds of the celebrity paying attention to it!

3. Follow people with similar interests, then follow their followers. This sounds kind of complicated, but it's really not.  Just look for users with similar interests to your own, but who have way more followers. Then all you need to do is follow that user and their followers.

• For example, if you're a tarot fanatic, find another tarot fanatic who has many followers, then follow those followers. If it's clear from your bio and your tweets that you're a tarot enthusiast, they're more likely to follow you.
• Be cautious though; following too many people may draw potential followers away.

4. Ask people to retweet you.  Being retweeted pushes your exposure to the edges of your Twitter network. Simply adding "Please retweet" or "Please RT" to the end of some of your posts here and there (not all the time) can remind your followers that you want them to spread the word for you. Occasionally posting a link to an article on How to Retweet will also help your followers help you.

5. Repeat your most popular tweets. Do a search for your Twitter name and observe which of your updates get the most replies and retweets. Then repeat those updates a few times roughly 8-12 hours apart.

• You'll reach more people this way because you're more likely to catch the attention of people who missed your updates the first time around. People "tune in" to Twitter at various times during the day (and night).
• If you get complaints about repeated tweets, you might want to ease off a little (or just delete the complainers!)

> Method 3 of 3: Increasing Your Followers Strategically

  1. Regularly unfollow people who haven't followed you back. This is especially important to avoid follow limits. The first limit you'll probably hit is when you've followed 2,000 people. You won't be able to follow any more until you have 2,000 followers.

• When this happens, you'll need to "clean-up" your list by unfollowing people who haven't followed you back. Aim to unfollow people who don't post that often, or whoose tweets you aren't really interested in. Then you won't feel like you're missing out.
• However, as the list of people you're following grows, it will become more and more time-consuming to go through it and filter out the non-followers. Luckily, there are services like Twidium and FriendorFollow which can clean up your list for you.
• Once your list is cleaned up, you'll be able to follow a whole new selection of Twitter users, and - if you choose carefully - most of them should follow you back!

2. Follow people who autofollow.  "Twitter celebrities" (Twitter users with huge numbers of following and followers) are also likely to follow you back automatically.

• They'll be following over a thousand or sometimes tens of thousands of people, but unlike spammers, they'll have the same number of (or more) followers.
• You'll stumble upon such accounts during your Twitter travels (e.g. when they are retweeted by someone you're following), but you can also do an Internet search for "most popular Twitter accounts" or "popular Tweeters".
• People who follow spammers are likely to be autofollowers. Wait until a spam follower follows you. Spam followers will have 1,000+ people they are following, but only 5 to 150 followers in return.
• Follow everyone who follows the spam follower. Those are likely to be people who are following in return in order to boost their own follow count.

3. Use keywords to find followers.  One good technique is to search for tweets with keywords related to your topics of interest.

• Let's say you're a metalhead. Look for people who mention your favorite metal groups. Reply to their tweets and then follow them. Your response will show them that you have something in common, and make it more likely that they'll follow you back.
• Better yet, retweet them if the content is good. Not only are you forming connections with other Twitter users, but you're also bringing good content to your followers.

  4. Use services that allow you to find people by location. Pick major cities, states and countries like Chicago or India. Follow anyone with who is following over 200 more people than are following them back.

Tips

• Make an effort to Keep Your Followers on Twitter.  People who actually keep up with the tweets of the people they follow will regularly re-evaluate who they follow and will unfollow whoever they feel is not worth following anymore.
• Consider creating a different Twitter account. There's the possibility that by making a concentrated effort to boost your follower numbers, your account might get suspended (for being a spammer). If your main Twitter account is very valuable to you (it's your full name, a distinct brand, etc.) you might want to create a test account to use these techniques with.

Warnings

• Twitter has a system that detects quick and massive follows and unfollows. If this system catches you, you may have your tweets stricken from the Twitter search engine.
• Do not send automatic direct messages as that may result in unfollows.
• Do not unfollow people right after you follow them. Wait at least five days before you unfollow people who don't follow back. If you do unfollow right away, you will most likely be reported as a spammer and your account will be suspended.