Assuming you have already filled in your profile. All of the details! You have made it interesting and added either a picture of yourself or an avatar that represents you. Me, I edit my profile often as it strikes me to do so. To be honest I think that I may change it too often. I don’t really change my picture “the floating head” as my followers call it. I’ll make it face right or left, maybe appear upside down for a day, but the picture is the same.
So you have the profile done, a nice picture and you have started tweeting. You are posting interesting tweets, you are replying to people and getting some replies – but not as many followers as you would like.
Hopefully, you have already figured out how to get people to reply to you on Twitter.You have already added (I hope) the 51 Twitter Users That Will (probably) Follow You Back and I hope they did follow you back.
Now you have to follow people, by choice it will be people that are in your niche, or people that you are interested in. Your call on what kind of people to follow of course, but I prefer people that follow me back. If you want to follow THE_REAL_SHAQ but he won’t follow you back. He may reply to one tweet, but he does not follow back.
So now we get to the funny image on the right. There are a lot (A LOT) of MLM and spammy Twitter accounts. You can tell these people are being auto-followed because, like the accounts listed to the right, the person who set up the account just adds 2000 followers, then a couple of hours later unfollows anyone who has not followed back. The account for Tavia Yeung – all 11 listed plus a dozen or so more that I didn’t want to make screen shots of – each had at least 400 followers. Some of the accounts had over 1000 followers. There was one tweet, something like “I’m going to the movies” on every account. One Tweet, an account one day old and 400 to 1000 followers on over 20 accounts.
When you are followed by one of these accounts the first thing you do is to hit that little block button to keep Twitter free from people that are just sending junk tweets. At the same time, think about those 400 to 1000 people that have already followed these accounts. Do you really think that they all decided to follow a brand new account with one essentially useless tweet? Nope, they are using a tool to automatically follow people back. Since all these people automatically followed these junk accounts, they will follow you back, probably. Probably, nothing is sure in this life except that it ends.
Of course, once you have these new followers you have to interact with them, go back to the basics of following good people that are in your niche, post interesting tweets, re-tweet things that interest you and avoid posting “too many” self-serving tweets. Follow this little practice and you will at least have a larger group of followers to be interacting with.
Now for the naysayers. I know a lot of people will say that having a lot of followers is not the most important thing in the world. People ask why have a lot of followers if you don’t know each and every one of them personally. Simple answer, Twitter in micro-blogging. Do you know everyone that reads your blog? Have you personally met every single person that wrote a blog post that you read? Unless you can answer yes to both questions, please don’t rant.
If you like this post, hit that little button that retweets it. Help someone else get a step ahead.
How do I get people to reply to me on Twitter?
This is a reply to a question (OK, that I’ve rephrased) posted on LinkedIn.
To get people to reply on Twitter you have to have people in your niche follow you and post good content.
How to get people in your niche to follow you, follow them first.
You begin the conversation so people get to know you and trust you. Building trust is important on Twitter, just like it is anywhere. When you speak, only say things that matter. When I was a new hire at Microsoft, no one listened more than required because I was new. Quiet by nature I didn’t talk much at meetings but was productive well above the average. 2 years later when I spoke people got quiet and listened.
Don’t go to sites that promise to get you a 1000 followers a week. While it is possible (I get over 300 new followers a day) people don’t like to see you posting advertisements for these sites nor for MLM sites. Don’t let anyone post anything on your feed.
Good, useful content. That is easy to understand. Make people want to re-tweet what you say. If you have a subject that you just wrote about in a blog, seach your keywords for people that ask a question on that subject and answer them. Make sure you include a link to your post in your answer if appropriate. There a lot of times that your link will not be right for the answer. Don’t be afraid to int inlude your link. If people like your answer there is a good chance that they will look at your profile and then find your post. (your profile does have a link to your blog, right?)
You have 140 characters to write in, right? Not me, I can only write 124 characters. That leaves space for “RT @_McLaughlin ” (notice the space after my name, I don’t even have 125 characters.
Want to use “tricks” to get noticed? The first is to make sure you re-tweet and interact with people Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, so you are fresh in their mind for the #FollowFriday that we all know and love.
Speaking of #FollowFriday, don’t do EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON YOUR LIST, like so many beginners do. Choose selectively and do them one at a time. Here is one that I did yesterday:
“Need a personal development fanatic? A serial online entrepreneur? #followfriday Dragos Roua AKA @edragonu”
Really bring out the benefits for following that one person. Know what I did wrong with the tweet about edragonu? I didn’t link to his site. People are probably not searching for a serial entrepreneur, so I could have dropped that off.
If you want someone to follow you and they don’t, try doing a nice #FollowFriday about them.