10 Killer Tips and Tricks for Increasing Twitter Followers

Twitter is growing rapidly and is fast becoming popular with the passage of time. It originally started off as a micro blogging platform where people could share their thoughts with others online without having to actually create a blog. Today, it has evolved into this social networking Giant, with tens of millions of member worldwide! In this post, we shall discuss some of the ways in which you can increase your popularity on Twitter.

Everyone needs followers nowadays! There is a whole lot of reasons why you’d want more followers; advertising a business, propagating a thought or an idea, increasing fan popularity, and earning money, to name a few. We have written more detailed articles on making money with twitter and twitter affiliate programs, which explain how you can make money and advertise your business etc. with Twitter. But for that to happen, you need to gain a large number of followers. So that shall be our point of focus today.

1.  Fill out your profile!

Many people underestimate the importance of this part, and hence ignore it. But there’s a reason why we have started off with this very point!

First of all, change your profile picture. Use a professional looking picture where your followers can clearly see you. I have observed that many people use pictures of cars, cartoons, celebrities etc. etc. While that may be fine for your friends, but for a follower who doesn’t know you personally, a picture of a celebrity will brand you as a fake to him. And chances are, he will run off faster than he came. You can also choose a background picture so that people will know you are a regular, since you have taken efforts to personalize your profile.

Fill out your bio. This is the next step. people don’t know you on the internet! So your name and picture suggest nothing to them. Filling out information like Who you are, What do you do, Your interests etc. That way, people will get to know about you, and if they have the same interests, they may follow you as well.

 2.  Re-tweet!

If you find a quality tweet, then don’t hesitate to re-tweet. Also encourage your followers to re-tweet. This will propagate your @username, resulting in more click-backs on your profile. Hence, more people will get to know about you. However, keep in mind not to re-tweet excessively. Tweeting your own content brings originality to your character. But tweeting excessively will get you viewed as a spammer. So be cautious!

3.  Create your tweet worth reading!

While talking face-to-face with someone, you use gestures, emotions and expressions, in short your body language to express your words. But on the internet, words is all you’ve got! And on twitter, you only have 140 characters. So choose wisely what you want to say. Make your tweets useful, to the point, and expressive. If possible, make them funny and informative.

To retain the attention of your followers, you might want to tweet frequently. Of course it depends upon what group of interests your followers belong to. But generally, one tweet per day seems fine. Tweeting a lot will get you marked as a spammer. Tweeting less will mark you as ‘not very active’. So keep your followers interested daily. Time your tweets at a time when roughly most of your followers are online.

For the content itself, do not complain about stuff. And do not post boring tweets. Some people often have the annoying habit of tweeting mundane things like “was a hectic day” or “eating spaghetti at home ” (etc. etc). Such tweets don’t go with followers who don’t know you personally, or don’t know you well enough for that matter.  Try to add #hash tags to your tweets (like #iPhone etc.). Use special characters to make your tweets more interesting. And try to leave some space in your tweets in case someone wants to re-tweet your tweet.

 4.  Interact with people

Following people will get you followers. But be careful! Having more ‘following’ and less followers has a bad impact on your credibility. Follow only those who have a good reputation. And request them to follow you in return.

You should also interact with your followers. If someone asks for help, then assist them. Joke around with your followers and be friendly. Try to reply to everyone who contacts you. This will help you retain your followers. Many people, when they gain lots of followers, stop replying. Of course there are too many people to interact with at one time, but if you want to retain your followers, then you must take out time and effort to reply to each one individually.

5.  Follow the top users and learn from them

Follow the top twitter users and look at what they are tweeting about. Learn from them and apply those things to your own tweets. You may get some new ideas or inspiration from them.

Check out the latest trends. Search for top twitterers in the same field of interest as you. Look at what they are talking about, and what’s ‘hot’. You should know about the twitter ‘lingo’ as it’s called. Jump into conversations so that people might get to know you. Talking about most recent events will improve your credibility.

6.  Take Photos!

Take photos of interesting things around you! As the saying goes; “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words“. People are more interested in images nowadays than wordy posts. Photos get passed around a lot. Your followers are likelier to forward your photos than to forward your tweets. In this way, more people will click on you profile link hoping for some more interesting photos. This technique is often underestimated, and may feel like nothing. But trust me, it will increase your profile visits by a sizable amount.

7.  Use extra Twitter tools

There are lots of 3rd party tools that can add more functionality to your twitter profile. Such features will attract more users to your tweets

• BigTweet allows you to write tweets for up to 240 characters!
• TwitPic allows you to post pictures with your tweets
• Qwitter lets you know when someone un-follows you
• Manageflitter Manage your followers and get easy to read overviews of people not following you back, quiet users, and inactive users
• Twitter Grader grades any Twitter account and gives you additional details and ranking information.
• SocialOomph allows you to automate your tweet timings, and other features.
• TwitterMeme informs you about the latest and ‘hot’ topics

 8.  Offer give-aways

If you have a blog or website, or any other forum through which you can interact with your audience, then offer give-aways to your audience. For example, you can offer something like an eBook etc. to those who follow you on twitter. People nowadays will do anything for free stuff 😛

HOLD CONTESTS! This is a trick way of grabbing hold of some followers. Start a contest and give out a prize to one luck winner (or as many as you like). You can give out anything, even some ad space on your profile: this will get some advertisers interested. A twitterer, @jasoncalacanis held a contest offering a free Macbook Air if he became the #1 followed person. He never made it to the top, nor did he give away any Macbooks. But he sure gained a few thousand followers in the process 🙂

9. Link up and Advertise your profile

Link your Twitter profile wherever you can; Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg etc. Also add a twitter link to your email signatures. Mention your twitter page in your daily life as well, e.g. your business card, presentation, contact card etc. If you have a blog, then you should create a tweet button on your pages.

10. Monitor and search

You should take full advantage of Twitter search tool. Find people who have the same interests as you. Befriend them. You should also track your results. Use the TwitterCounter tool to see how many new users you are adding per day. Another tool, Qwitter will let you know when someone un-follows you, so that you can return the favor 😛

These are some of the best methods of increasing twitter followers. But we do not guarantee instant followers! These things take time and effort. So be patient, and share this post with others in the meantime so that others may benefit as well.

Cheers 🙂