If you want to know how to grow your Twitter following, I observe that there are five clear methods to do so.  The bad news is that there is no free and easy path, unless you are perhaps already a mega star.  Whether you represent a brand or are an individual, gaining a Twitter following will require a cocktail of singularity of purpose, hard work and a healthy dose of generosity.  Being genuine, helpful and valuable are the underlying tenets of the Twitter universe. {Please click here to Tweet this out!}

Building your following is not the end

To be clear, social media marketing should not be about having the biggest number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers.  Nonetheless, the opportunity to raise your game and increase your online visibility on social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook is there for those who are willing to take the plunge.  Before anything, the key consideration is to set up an objective, and then make sure to put the appropriate resources against that objective.

5 ways for how to grow your Twitter following

Generally, getting a following on Twitter is a slow grind, especially when getting off the ground.  However, there are some very clear ways – including some more traditional approaches – to help accelerate the process.  These ‘faster’ methods investments, which require deeper investments in time and money (#3 and #4), are tempting; but, they come with downsides.

So, there are five discernible ways to build your Twitter following.

1. Genuine Conversation & Interaction. Exchange is key and is the building block to a healthy Twitter account.  You can consider Twitter as a worldwide virtual agora.  Chatting with people you know or picking up conversations with people who share passions or interests is a primary method for being noticed.  By favoriting (Twitter’s form of “liking”) or retweeting other people’s tweets, you can gain good karma, which should in turn over time, help to pick up followers.  Above all, by being conversational, Twitterati will tend to appreciate the two-way style (as opposed to being a broadcaster or self-trumpeter).
2. Add Value.  Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  So, it is key to provide tweets that provide value to your [potential] followers.  The more evident that value appears, the more likely followers will come.  Adding value means not just retweeting the best tweets you find on a given topic, but providing additional commentary (e.g. a helpful hashtag).  Value can be in the form of a viable and useful link.  Of course, there are well-crafted original tweets.  Also, you can add value by helping others on specific questions.
   
3. Follow back.  At its base, this entails systematically following back someone who follows you.  This means that, because you followed them back, you will likely keep that follower.  In practice, however, the follow back principle is now generally used in reverse:  someone follows you and if you don’t follow you back, they unfollow you. Many people have created a large following by cycling through the Twittersphere and trying to “capture” easy followers.  You can easily tell who falls into this category because they have a rather symmetrical follower/followee ratio (i.e. around 1.0).  The big downside of systematically following back: (1) you end up with noise in your stream and, more annoyingly, in your DM box; and (2) you are less likely to be considered as an influencer.  Bear in mind that once you pass having 2,000 people you are following, Twitter stops you from having more than 10% more people who are following you.
4. Buy ‘em.  Ignoring the ignominious process that consists in paying an agency to go fish for lists of questionable accounts (e.g. this proposition on Fiverr), you can invest via Twitter in sponsored or promoted tweets.  The quality and quantity of followers will depend sincerely on the quality of the tweet.  Sponsored tweets are still in their infancy, but they represent a way to attract an audience.  The downside: you may end up with unqualified followers and you will need to keep up the ads to keep up the follower acquisition until you figure out how to accomplish #1 and #2.
5. Get on mass media.  Easier said than done, but getting on mass media (TV, radio…) is validation of the person.  Providing there is appropriate signage (embedding your @handle) and good coverage, you can expect the followings to spike without needing to follow back.  At the very least, it is highly recommendable to embed your Twitter presence into your PR activities.

Once you achieve a certain magical level, the hockey stick effect takes into effect whereby you attract because you have attracted (the crowd effect).  Arbitrarily, I used to say anyone with over 10,000 followers was probably well positioned for the hockey stick.  If you have acquired a large following and are following few (over a 2.0 follower/followee ratio), you could become considered an influencer on a given topic.  If the ratio is over 10, then you are clearly a Twitter star, if not an IRL celebrity!

Twitter is an excellent business tool.  Having a large number of followers is not the Valhalla. What counts is the level of trust you create and the amount of people who read, share and click on your tweets.  Hopefully, by applying these techniques you will better be able to grow your Twitter following, with due emphasis on points #1 and #2.

Hope you enjoyed this post.