How I Got Zero to 1,000 Twitter Followers in Less Than 2 Months!
I just hit 1,000 Twitter followers today! A couple of days ago was my 2 month anniversary here at WA and I've blogged about my progress. I had almost 100 Twitter followers after my first month (I only created the account halfway through the month) so I aimed to double it to 200 by the end of the 2nd month.
A lot of people have been asking me how I did it. How did I get so many followers in such a short time? Well, let me share that information with you.
How Did I Do It?
Amazingly I was able to DESTROY my goal of 200 and just hit 1,000 followers! I'm new to Twitter and don't know all the techniques on how to get followers but here's what I've been doing:
- Complete Your Profile - add a photo, fill out your bio. It's important for people to know that you are a real person and you need to try and connect with them in a personal way
- Follow Relevant People - Follow people by doing keyword searches in Twitter related to your niche. For example, my niche is earthquake preparedness so I enter that along with other keywords to see who are talking about that topic and I follow them. You'll get people to follow you back and best of all, they are already talking about your niche so they are more targeted than just some random person. I try and do this on a daily basis.
- Use Hashtags - hash-tagging is a great way to increase visibility of your tweets and you can use trending hashtags for a greater impact. You can use online tools like http://trendsmap.com to see what is currently trending as well as looking on the left side trend bar on Twitter itself
- Follow Everyone Who Follows You - Some people will post welcome messages to those who follow them which gives you more exposure to all their followers so it's a good idea to follow those who follow you. In addition, some people will clean their follower list by unfollowing those who don't follow them back. Make sure you stay on their list by following them.
- Try to Tweet Often - An active account gains more exposure as it is more likely to be re-tweeted and shared around. If you don't have content to tweet about, just do keyword searches on Twitter based on your niche and re-tweet some interesting articles and videos.
- Try and Get Celebrities or Highly Followed People to Follow You - Imagine getting a celebrity who has millions of followers re-tweeting one of your posts. That's free advertising to millions of people! It can go viral and make a huge impact to your business. What I did was use this site http://twittercounter.com/pages/100 and followed high influencers. For me, I chose people who have a lot of followers, tweet a lot, and show that they might follow back. For example, if there's a person with 80 million followers but they only follow 100 people, chances are they won't follow you back so I didn't bother. It's totally up to you though. Who knows, you might get lucky and they might follow you back.
- Connect With People - If people follow you or re-tweet your post, connect with them. Tweet a welcome or thank you message to them. Don't just do a simple "Thanks for following!" tweet. Make it more personal by actually taking the time to look at their profile. You might say something like "Thanks for the follow! I really like that you're interested in the safety and well-being of others. Have a great day!".
- Use Links in Your Tweets - Having links in your tweets brings some interaction with the user and also allows them to get more information about what you're talking about since tweets are capped at 140 characters.
- Use images in your Tweets - When I tweet about one of my articles that I just posted on my blog, I usually add the blog header image with it. People are visual so having a nice image that catches their attention is always a good idea.
Once you get a decent following, seems like it gets easier and easier to get followers. The more followers you have the more chance of getting your post re-tweeted or someone commenting on your tweet which is of course exposed to their followers and also in the general keyword searches on Twitter.
Twitter is Pretty Awesome
Twitter is a great tool to get your site out there and a great source of traffic other than relying solely on search engines. I actually got a pretty amazing backlink from Twitter the other day which I blogged about. Someone reached out to me saying that they love my site and that they wanted to add it to the resource list in one of the programs they just launched a week ago.
Much to my surprise, when I looked at the website it was a government sponsored site focusing on preparedness and that program will be rolled out to all schools in BC (British Columbia, Canada) starting this September! I was so shocked but excited! I wouldn't have had that contact without Twitter and its wide exposure.
Final Thoughts
I'm still learning as I go but seems like what I've been doing has been working for me and I thought I might share my knowledge to help others build up their Twitter account as well. I'm working on my Bootcamp site now as I go through the Affiliate Bootcamp but haven't created any social media accounts for that yet but definitely will pretty soon.
If any of you have any helpful tips or tricks, please post them in the comments. I'm always looking to learn something new that will help me out and I'm sure it'll help others out too.
P.S. If you're not on Twitter, GO ON IT!
Wish you all success!
Recent Comments
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Twitter is by far my most successful social media tool yet :) it makes it so easy to find your demographic, and to see who you are following and IF they are following you back, it also gives you an idea of WHO they are before you follow. I truly am a Twitter fan just after a couple of weeks :)
Yeah I love Twitter and I find it's the best out of the other social media outlets for me as well. I find it harder to get followers from other social media.
Yes it is so difficult, I realized I don't like any celebs lol the I started of with three and after looking at the link you posted I still have 3 and they were in the top 100 so I am ok I guess :) Have a wonderful week
Awesome ideas. I especially like the idea about following high profile twitter members.
Well done!
This is really great advice I've never really done twitter so if I end up setting up an account sometime I will take all of the advice you have provided. Thanks
No problem. I definitely encourage you to try it because it's helped bring extra traffic to my site and gives the potential for posts to go viral.
This is a great post Yakitori! I just recently realized people were putting photos on Twitter! For some reason, I thought it was just links! I am still trying to understand it - I looked for the search feature but for some reason, I could not find it! lol
I need Twitter for Dummies because I obviously am one! :)
It's at the very top near the right side of the nav bar beside your profile icon. It says "Search Twitter".
Also when you post a tweet, there's an icon of a camera on the bottom left of the comment box that allows you to add pictures to the tweet. Keep in mind that the length of the link counts toward the 140 character limit.
Thank you! I very much appreciate this! What size photos do you use? Are they smaller, like Pinterest size?
I just use whatever size is on my blog.(560 x 315) but I don't think it matters because it will be adjusted by Twitter. So as long as they aren't small it should be fine.
Thanks for sharing Yakitori.I am completely illiterate when it comes to Facebook and Twitter and most other social media.I dove right in when it came to building a website and your post is encouragement for me to dive right in to learning social media activities.Keep up the great work.
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Great job buddy! keep rolling!
Thanks a lot Tony!