Just a year ago, I had 630 Twitter followers. At the time of this writing (November 2015), I have 22,600 Twitter followers. By growing your Twitter followers, you will get your message out to more people. This will result in more sales (if you are a business) or more visibility and social clout if you are doing it from a personal perspective.
So how did I go from 630 followers in November 2014 to over 22,600 a year later?
Related post: Success stories for driving more blog visits
Follow Others
The first key is to follow other Twitter accounts, especially people who have similar interests as you or to what you are selling. When you follow someone, they are more likely to follow you back. I try to follow about 500 new people per day.
Unfollow Others
If you begin following someone and they are not following you back, consider unfollowing them. There are times when you will want to follow people who are not following you back. For example, you may follow business mentors, famous people, or others that are unlikely to follow you back. That’s totally fine and it makes sense in those scenarios. But for the most part, unfollow those that don’t follow back.
Unfollow Inactive Twitter Accounts
Some people create a Twitter account but never use it. If they are not using it, they will never see your message, so there’s no need to continue following them. My rule of thumb is that if someone is not active in Twitter for a month, I unfollow them.
Follow Competitor’s Followers
If you are selling a product, it’s a good idea to find out who is following your competitor and follow those people. If they were interested enough in your competitor’s tweets, they are probably open to seeing yours.
Follow People with Similar Interests
If you are selling a product that helps with productivity, you can easily find Twitter accounts that follow productivity experts. By following those people, they will probably be interested in your product since it solves an issue they are already interested in.
Tweet Often with Good Content
I normally tweet about once an hour and I tweet articles that I am interested in. I figure if I find a cool article, my Twitter followers will also enjoy that article. By streaming hourly Tweets, you will build fans that want to see more of your tweets.
Twitter Automation
If you made it this far into this post, you are probably scratching your head saying “how can you follow 500 people a day and tweet every hour?”. The secret is automation. I spend about 30 to 45 minutes a day building my Twitter followers and setting up automated tweets that fire every hour.
I use a tool called Crowdfire to follow 500 people a day, unfollow those that have not followed me back, unfollow inactive Twitter accounts, and to find new followers with my interests or from a competitor. Crowdfire costs me $9.99 a month and is well worth the cost.
To tweet every hour of the day, I use a tool called ViralContentBuzz. ViralContentBuzz allows you to post your own articles for others to tweet. In exchange, you can find interesting articles that others have posted and schedule them to tweet on whatever schedule you decide (I do it hourly).
ViralContentBuzz has a free edition (that’s the one I use) and it allows you to build up credits by tweeting other people’s articles. Since I am doing this hourly, it gives me plenty of credits to allow other people to tweet my articles.
Further Reading
If you really want to maximize visitors to your website or blog, there are other strategies you can use as well. For example, you will need to implement good SEO strategies, post your articles on different distribution platforms, and market your blog. If you want more information on that, see an article I recently wrote entitled “WordPress SEO: 10 Tips to Boost your Google Ranking“.
Also, check out these success stories I’ve been a part of for driving more blog visits.
Conclusion
By following the tips in this article, you will begin gaining more Twitter followers and driving more traffic to your website or blog. If you’ve discovered other strategies that have worked, please share them in the comments below.
About this Blog
Steve and his wife built a software company, sold it and retired early. Steve enjoys blogging about lifestyle freedom, financial independence, and technology. If you like this blog, subscribe here to get an email each time he posts.
If you like this post, you might also like these prior posts:
- Success Stories: Drive more traffic to a blog
- WordPress SEO: 10 Tips to Boost your Google Ranking
- Ask Alexa: How Popular is your Website or Blog?
- A Password Manager is like a Swiss Army Knife
- How to Build a Product Website for your App
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Steve, I’m guessing that you have seen a big increase in blog traffic from the rise in Twitter followers? How has gaining an additional 22k translated over to blog traffic?
Thias @It Pays Dividends recently posted…Dividend Payout #17 – The Most Important Moment
Yes, when you combine posting your blog posts on ViralContentBuzz, then other people share it and that drives traffic.
Nice insights, thanks! Two comments: you might consider followliker for the twitter automation, which is very powerful and they charge a one time fee, no subscription. Second, 500 followings a day is quite aggressive and your account might get suspended as twitter does not like this strategy. A good approach is to vary your daily followings in the range of 0-1000.
Hi Simon — I think 500 per day is safe. According to this article, you can follow as many as 1,000 per day: http://blog.crowdfireapp.com/10-twitter-limits-any-smart-user-should-know/
1000 is the technical limit. But as they mention in your link your account might be subject to suspension. This depends on many factors such as the popularity of your tweets, and the age of your account (the older the safer). If you come across too spammy your account will get shut down (even very big accounts with 250000+ followers).
That being said, high quality tweets (not spammy link tweets all the time) probably help a lot.
Im going to try this but will try the free version first of crowdfire to see how it works. Im going to check out that viralbuzz too. So youre saying you just tell it what to tweet? How did you pick what you tweet out? As far as other peoples content?
Alexander @ Cash Flow Diaries recently posted…The Story Of My Very First Real Estate Investment – From Foreclosure To Performing Note
Actually I did have one more question for you.
How long do you wait to unfollow people that you followed but dont follow you back?
Alexander @ Cash Flow Diaries recently posted…Blog Income Report and Traffic Stats â October 2015 (5th month of blogging!)
I wait 2 days to unfollow
They have articles by category so you can always find articles that your audience will enjoy.
Whoa, 20K+ twitter followers… nice buddy!! This is a great resource. I hadn’t heard of Viral Content Buzz before, but I definitely gotta check it out now.
Michael @ Financially Alert recently posted…I’m All In! Time to Track My Net Worth.
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