No matter how many people your twitter account claims are
following you, the only followers you actually have are the ones who interact
with you. If you have 10 million followers and you never get a reply or
retweet, then you have zero followers.
Why Do I
Twitter
The need to be
followed is non-too surprising, numbers are easy to follow and having lots of
"followers" makes us feel liked and important. In the end you
really have to ask yourself, what do I want out of twitter? Some are seeking
promotion, some are seeking friendship, and some just want to read others
tweet. If you are firmly in the last camp, this post isn't for you, and the
number of followers you have doesn't matter.
If you wish to
gain any benefit from the previous two then ask yourself, "How do I
benefit from having lots of followers?" The answer is probably something
like, “More people will RT my posts and I'll have greater exposure” or “The
more people that follow me the more interaction I'll have”. This is only true
if you are attracting quality followers.
What most people
mean when they say I want more followers is, "I want more exposure and
interaction". However what they usually end up with is more followers and
not anymore exposure or attraction.
Quality over
Quantity
If quality is such
a big deal, how does one attract quality followers?
The only way to
build up a strong base of quality followers is to create genuine relationships
with people who have common interests.
Create genuine relationships
with people who have common interests.
Tips for
Creating Genuine Relationships on Twitter
Connect with the
quality followers you already have. If you have followers that often reply and
RT your content, it is important for you to make an effort to connect with
those people and provide enough value for their continued effort. Most
people are plenty happy to have a conversation and get a well-deserved RT once
in a while. If you completely ignore your strongest supporters they will
vanish.
Trim the fat. If
you are following 10,000 spam bots or following tons of people so they will
follow you back, unfollow them all. You should be following few enough people
so that you can actually communicate with them. The majority of your exposure
will come from a small group of people. Staying loyal to them will give you the
best results in both promotional and relational spheres.
Write good tweets,
if you are only releasing a glob of links for your blogs/sites/products people
will get tired of you quickly, on the other hand if you are only sending out
tweets about your cat or lunches people will get tired of that also. It's
better to write nothing than to write stuff people hate.
Finding people
with common interests
Follow Friday is
a good source of quality users, most people won't recommend someone who is
terrible. Also you learn fast if someone makes bad recommendations.
Follow people who
RT the same items as you. After you tweet or retweet about an item, click on it
and you can see how many other people retweeted the same thing. Follow some of
those people; chances are if they liked the same thing you did enough to share
it, you have some common ground.
Follow and
unfollow a lot of people. It's ok to follow someone and if you don't enjoy
their stuff, unfollow them. Lots of people feel locked into a follow, but they
shouldn't. It's the internet; it's not like dumping a girlfriend. If
anyone ever gives you guff about unfollowing them just say, "I wasn't
enjoying your tweets, that's all. If you don't enjoy it unfollow, the end.
Follow me twitter
at twitter.com/barnesjonathan
If you have tips
for creating great relationships on twitter leave em in the comments.
Note: This probably doesn't apply to people who already have a large platform with which to generate followers, blogs, podcasts, television shows etc.
Posts
1 Response to How To Get More Twitter Followers: Create Genuine Relationships
One of the things I did early on with my blog was to introduce new followers and give them a shout out. Since most were other blogger users it helped them attract traffic. Some of my longest/strongest Internet friendships are from the early days of my blog. Once I hit 100 followers I got out of the habit, and at 330 followers today I do not know a whole lot of them.
As for attracting many of the early followers I would seek out blogs that had intersts in common and would make comments. I live for comments, so I try to reciprocate, though blog reading has gotten away from me of late.
As for Twitter, I have a lot of friends of friends. Many I knew from my blog and many came from those people's friends. Twitter is oddly fluid and there are some people I talk to almost daily who I could not tell you how we "met" in the first place. :-) best advice is to never ask anyone to follow you
Post a Comment