10 Incredibly Simple & Powerful Twitter Tips for Getting More Quality Followers

Twitter is a powerful networking and marketing tool. Reaching 1000s of people on a worldwide platform is the main attraction for most users.

I love how so many people from so many different areas of the globe can join in conversation with each other, with no introduction, or seemingly no solid link between them.

If you’re on Twitter then you’ll be focusing on joining conversations, chatting to friends and peers and of course you’ll have an eye on your follower numbers.

Now before I get into this blog, I just wanted to say something…

The number of followers you have is irrelevant – it’s the number of interactions and actions you have that matters!

The age-old phrase “quality over quantity” is what counts. I’ve read blogs that state that having loads of followers is important and it doesn’t matter who they are…

Really? If they’re not interested in you, your uniqueness, your product or your business will they reply, click on your blog or visit your website for more information?

No… they’ll just skim you with the rest of the people that they auto-followed or followed back.

So quality is important if you want results.

If you like numbers for kudos then I won’t stop you, but don’t expect huge conversions if that’s your only aim.

Ok? Good…. Now on with this week’s blog.

10 Incredibly Simple & Powerful Twitter Tips for Getting More Quality Followers

#1. Follow other people

Let’s get into this with an obvious one. If you follow people then often they will follow you back.

It’s not obligatory and you should always avoid the #TeamFollowBack crew because they’re only interested in the numbers (see rant above), but generally speaking, people will follow you back if they think you look interesting.

To use this effectively you should find useful people to follow and people who are interested in the things that you’re interested in. You should find and follow your potential customers, fans or people who would benefit from things that you offer.

There are billions of people on Twitter so you’re really spoilt for choice on who to follow (more on how to find them coming up). Take an interest in others first. That goes for most of Twitter actually – finding new people is no exception.

#2. Follow your list members and subscribers

Twitter has a really cool feature called lists. Not many people use them to their full potential, but you can really capitalise on Twitter by paying them some attention.

Let’s look at how lists can find you new followers.

You may well be a member of a list and this means you have a really easy way to find like-minded people on Twitter already.

Go to your profile on Twitter.com (click ‘Me’)

Click on ‘More’ and then ‘Lists’.

Now you’ll be able to see all the lists that you have set up or subscribed to (if any). Then, if you click ‘member of’ which is next to ‘Subscribed’, you’ll be able to see all the lists that you have been added to. 

This is a great way to find people like you or people that are in the same industry as you or simply people that are in the same county, town or group outside of Twitter.

Simply click on one of the lists and then click on ‘list members’ from the sidebar and you’ll be able to follow as many of them as you like. I like this view as you get to see their bio and you can easily click ‘follow’ on them as you scroll down.

These people should be targeted if the list was set up by a reputable person. The best way to check if that’s the case is to click on the owner of the list which is in the top left corner next to the list name.

This should find you some great like-minded accounts to follow and hopefully gain you some good follow backs too.

#3. Local focus? Follow the followers of a local account

Many Twitter accounts have a very local focus. Obviously these accounts need local follows and they need to take an interest in those local Twitter accounts too. But how do you find them?

A simple trick I like to do is to find influential local Twitter accounts and check out their followers. These might be newspapers, radio stations, non-profit organisations, or anyone who tweets about local stuff.

You can easily do this by going to the local Twitter account:

• Click on their profile

• Click on their followers

• Then browse and follow the ones of interest

This should give you a pretty good list of local accounts if you find a really good local Twitter account to start with. I used to run a local Twitter account and I always found that people did this with my followers. It made sense that when a new local Twitter account started that they headed over to check out my followers.

#4. Search Twitter for keywords and phrases

If you’re marketing on Twitter but not currently searching Twitter on a regular basis then you need to take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror!

Twitter is the perfect way to search real, live, focused conversations about your product, service or brand.

To search Twitter is so simple you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it when you started!

The key to searching is to find tweets or users that would interest you and/or vice versa.

Think about the phrases and keywords that you’d expect your prospects or customers would use and then search Twitter for them. You could also search for the key terms and phrases from your industry to find competitors or like-minded accounts.

• To search Twitter go to the ‘search Twitter’ bubble in the menu bar (I told you it was easy!)

• Type in the words(s) that you want to search for

• Then filter with the sidebar on the left. You can choose everything, people, photos, news, timelines or the advanced search (which is truly awesome – use it!)

• Then you can choose who to follow or interact with.

Powertip: Refine your search to get the best results. Add more words to filter out poor results and if you want to find tweets or accounts with a particular phrase then put “” around the phrase. This gives you search results with  your words in the right order and ensures that when you’re looking for people who “want fish for tea” that you don’t find people who think “don’t like fish, give me a cup of tea any day”

#5. Follow your favouriters

Recently I’ve stopped ranting about favourites on Twitter. Yes I know I’ve always hated them. No I don’t like them. Yes I’ve found a way to make the most of them.

When you’re favourited by someone it’s a pretty good indication that they like you. It’s not like a Facebook like, but recently favourites have been appearing in other people’s timelines so they might be useful for reaching more. But that’s not the tip…

What I like to do is follow people who have favourited my tweets as I think they’ll be a useful person to follow me. Often people will favourite a tweet that’s retweeted or that they’ve found because of a hashtag. Following them will notify them of your existence once more and often leads to a new follower.

#6. Follow the hashtaggers!

Hahstags are another area of Twitter that you can find great people. If there’s a hashtag that’s of interest to you then the users of the hashtag will be too.

Take an event for example.

There are usually hashtags for events and the event promoter will encourage people to tweet with the hashtag before, during and after the event.

I like to make sure that I follow all the useful people that use and interact with that hashtag. A simple way to keep an eye on a hashtag is to add it as a column on Tweetdeck.

#7. Tweet more often… tweet a lot more often!

Here’s an interesting idea. The more you tweet the more chance you’ve got of being found.

It’s true too. Some of the most popular people on Twitter tweet a lot!

Jeff Bullas tweets an astonishing 100 times per day and to date has sent over 187K tweets! Why? Because the more he tweets, the more chance people see his tweets, and the more people read his blog (which is awesome by the way).

Now obviously Jeff is a content machine so he has a lot of stuff to share. I’m not suggesting that you share the same blog over 90 times a day. Jeff has a huge resource to pull from. He very rarely interacts now that he has over 259K followers, but he started once with none. He once had no followers and now he has over a quarter of a million.

He’s not alone either. There are plenty of people with a huge following who tweet phenomenal amounts a day. Scheduling tools like Buffer are your friend here and of course you’ll need to interact and engage too.

I’ve recently started tweeting a lot more and my automated content has increased. Guess what? My follower numbers started to rise and my blog is getting way more visits. It’s dead simple and it works.

#8. Join Twitter chats

There are some really cool Twitter chats happening right now and there are also loads of local #InsertNameHours too. Not all of these have targeted followers for everyone, but if your focus is local then the local hashtag hours are a really good resource.

Join in and interact and make sure what you say is valid. You need to attract people not make yourself look spammy and boring. Go for the Twitter chats that are right for your industry or focus and you’ll find some great people.

When you finish the Twitter chat, go back on the hashtag and follow all the interesting accounts who joined in too. That way you’ll find some great users and they’ll find you in their notifications.

#9. Tweet about what you do – attract more people

If you sell fresh bread in London then tweet about it! Twitter is really easy to go off on a tangent with but you’ll harm your growing following if you do.

Other people will be searching Twitter just like you will be after this blog (you will, right?!) so make sure that they can find you by your tweets.

If you sell fresh bread in London but you’re not tweeting about it then how will anyone find you? Keep it focused as well as fun.

#yummy #bread I can hear the jam calling! #morning #kew people! pic.twitter.com/DecrzTTR5c

— Hammond’s (@HammondsKew) June 3, 2014

#10. Have a strong bio (and add your location for local search)

It sounds obvious, but for the love of God get your bio sorted! When you search Twitter, user’s bios come up first. The words in those bios are triggering them and if your bio hasn’t got all the right keywords in then you won’t pop up when other people search.

Work out the words that people type into Twitter (or Google) to find you and get them added. I don’t mean have a crappy bio crammed with words that makes no sense either. It has to be full of keywords AND be compelling enough to click ‘follow’.

Oh and #this #is #not #a #great #way #to #write #a #bio! So please avoid it.

Also, if you’re looking for local followers you really should add your location into your bio. Starting local is an easy win for any Twitter account so even if you’re not necessarily local it might be a good place to start. You can leave the Worldwide location tag for when you’re rich and famous. Start small and build big!

So there you have it; 10 tried and tested tips that work!

As I said at the start of this blog – it’s not all about numbers, but they do help!

The fact is, the more followers that you have the more people that you can market to. But of course if they’re fake, unrelated to your industry or product, not interested in your or your business or simply #followback spammers, then it won’t help you.

Keep your following focused by being consistent and constant. Consider upping your output and following a heap more people. There are some great Twitter tools out there for Twitter so get yourself tooled up.

• Always think… “Would I follow me?” Are you interesting enough to follow? How does your bio look? Have you got some great content and ideas to share?

• You’re asking people to put you in their timeline – make the choice a simple one!

• It doesn’t happen overnight but if you’re putting in the effort then people will come.

Thanks for reading and good luck. Remember it’s quality over quantity and even the largest accounts started from zero!

Now it’s your turn…

What tips do you have for finding and getting more followers? We’d love to hear them in the comments below

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