I’m often asked how you can build followers on Twitter. The truth is that there isn’t any secret to doing this and buying followers or using autofollow systems is a short sighted cheat which isn’t a good idea. Buying followers is like hiring people to line up outside your bar to make it look busy. You might get some new people lining up because of the crowd, but if your bar sucks, they won’t be staying no matter how many people you’ve paid to get in line.
Leveraging Twitter for your brand marketing simply takes hard work and effort. Here are five ways I've found effective to build your brand on Twitter:
There are regularly scheduled Twitter chats on just about any subject you can think of. Whether its industries or special interests, there’s a good bet there’s a regular chat for it with relevant hashtags to increase your reach. What you find here is inspiration and an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and insight. Every time I participate in a chat I gain a few new followers and find a few more people to follow. Here’s a link to a Google Docs schedule of a good number of Twitter chats. There's a wide range of topics covered:
You already know (I hope) that it’s critical to provide engaging content in your email marketing which adds value to your subscribers day and the same goes for tweeting i.e. posting content from others, not just your own company.
Pick topics which relate to what your niche is and then tweet or retweet them to share them with others. Become a source for information on particular topics and people will follow you. Think about ways to group topics your audience will find interesting, useful or entertaining.
Almost every niche or interest has a channel on Twitter. If you’re an email marketer, you might follow #emailmarketing and #email marketing. Don’t megaphone these channels! Don’t just spew out marketing messages! Participate, answer questions, retweet useful tweets, interact and just be friendly as you would at a real life networking opportunity.
Following someone is a reaction and that requires a provocation. Nothing provokes a reaction like a strong insightful opinion. The opinion doesn’t have to controversial, but it certainly should get people thinking.
This is an easy one. Make sure you have your Twitter profile linked from all your pages and be sure you make sharing easy for people on your blog and even on your sales/landing pages. Put the sharing buttons on the top of the post and the bottom because those are the spots where people are going to make the decision to share. Don’t be afraid to ask people to share your content and invite them to follow you in your posts!
Remember that social media and the web in general is driven by communities so, be a good community member! Participate and contribute because as with any community, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
What tips do you have to add to help people or gain followers on Twitter?
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