With over 284 million monthly active users, Twitter is a hot favorite of businesses and bloggers alike. Twitter streams about sixty million tweets per day which makes it pretty easy to get lost amidst popular Twitter users and big social media companies. Having said that, its obvious that every pro was once a beginner. If you want to increase your Twitter following and have a rather engaged audience here’s the 14 days guide to do better Twitter.
I have summarized the guide from a beginners point of view so if you already are using Twitter you can take the first steps as a checklist for your Twitter profile.
Day 1: Set up your Twitter profile and cover photo like a professional:
As the age old maxim goes “The first impression is the last impression”, set up your Twitter profile picture and cover photo that doesn’t look amateurish.
a) Set up a head shot of your own as your profile picture. Setting up profile pictures of your favorite cat or rabbit might appear cute but will not help in the long run.
b) Upload an attractive cover photo. You can put your services or company objective here but in an elegant way.
c) Write a compelling bio of yourself. Remember you have only 160 characters to tell your story so make sure you utilize your Twitter bio to address your potential audience. You can add the keywords you want to appear for when searched. Putting a hashtag before them can increase visibility. Don’t forget to add fun tags about you as these will make your profile appear more human.
Key Point: Don’t forget to add your website link to its dedicated section. You can use a custom URL of a landing page to funnel your leads generated by Twitter.
Day 2: Set your goal and make a list of top twenty Twitter users who your followers might be following.
On day two, make your twitter goals more precise than ever before. Set up clear points as to what you want. Ask questions to yourself like:
Are you looking for 10k followers? Or do you want to get freelance gigs from potential clients? Etc.
This will help you in the next part which is to identify influencers of your niche on twitter. Make a list of at least twenty such twitter profiles that your audience might be following. Technically they are the pro twitter users of your niche. Just follow them.
Day 3: Create and curate content that adds value to your followers.
On day three, collect content that you need to feed your followers on Twitter. You can curate the content from other sites and users that according to you are related to your niche and would help your audience. You can also publish your own articles from your own blog or other social profiles too. Use an amalgamation of quotes and images on your posts. Tweets with images have greater reach. Remember our aim is to be social not just post and push articles. So include stuff like festival wishes and other trending tweets sometimes.
You can use tools like Hashtagify to access the trending hashtags and copy them to the notepad for using it later in your posts. Remember hashtags increase your post visibility and life.
4) Follow more people by using Twitter’s who to follow function:
While there are other tools that give you an insight of people whom you should follow, we will concentrate on Twitter’s own “who to follow” feature. This is both free and easy. Logically about 30% of the twitter accounts you follow you back. So if you are dealing with eBooks you can search for people having that keyword.
Now make a habit of following at least 500 accounts each day. Typically 150 users will follow you back so if you follow this ritual for a month you can get almost 4500 followers who belong to the same niche as you do. I suggest using mobile for this as it’s just a click’s effort that’s needed on mobiles. It ultimately saves our time.
Key Point: You can only follow 2000 more accounts than the number of accounts that follow you, so be careful. You can regularly unfollow people that do not follow you back (more on that later!).
Day 5: Use quotable lines or tweets on your blog posts.
Having quotes and one liner advices on your blog post can be utilized by motivating people to tweet them. You can use a plugin like Social Warfare to give highlight portions that can be tweeted directly from the post itself. Here's how Social Warfare works:
Day 6: Create a landing page on your website.
Sending your twitter followers to a blunt homepage is as bad as not sending them anywhere. Yes we all have a set aim for twitter followers and we should not delay funneling them to do the work. So, create a separate landing page for users specifically coming from twitter. Greet them and let them know you know that they came through twitter. This will help users feel welcomed and they can perform your next task easily. The task can be anything you set, from signing up a mailing list to joining your forum or trying a product too. Don’t be over demanding.
Day 7: Flaunt your Twitter account everywhere you go:
If you are thinking to promote your account by getting your skin inked, let me stop you. Neither do you have to wear Tees that shout your username (yikes!).
What I am saying is, you should use your Twitter handle everywhere you exist like your Facebook page, your Google plus account under the profile and also in email signature. This will let people know that you are on twitter too. Some of them who are rather active on twitter will prefer to use your handle to communicate.
Day 8: Unfollow non followers and other inactive people:
Unfollowing the not so worthy followers who don’t respond to you can be a good choice and it will leave room for following more engaged and worthy followers. You can do it in bulk using the tool SocialBro, and others like SocialQuant.
Day 9: Analyze your existing Twitter followers:
You have to study your followers and then shape your strategies in a way that you can generate more response from them. For this you have to analyze them and make an excel file on certain topics that you want to use for further tweeting.
There are many factors your analysis should concentrate on of which some are as follows:
1) Top interests of your followers- This will help you to relate to them and shape your tweets that cater to their taste. Results will be a better loyal audience. What benefit will tweets about fashion give a user when most of his followers are professionals and interested in sports’ who’s who.
2) Your followers’ region: Knowing location of your followers can help you to detect the time when they are active and thus help you refine your tweets.
3) Quality and type of engagement:
When you are investing in something you got to check your return on investment. You should also analytics to find the number of retweets you are getting. Same is with replies and favorites.
It will then help you to check if your content is valuable (people will share valuable stuff to their own followers), or resonating (tweeps usually hit the favorite option to say they can relate to what you say), or if your content is making someone interested in starting a conversation (people will reply to your tweets).
For more on twitter analytics refer this:
Day 10: Take the direct response approach:
Now that you are well established with your initial twitter proceedings, just apply the direct response method. Here you need to just go searching for people whose tweets contain some keywords you focus on. Then you go to their tweets and reply them directly offering a solution to their queries. Be decent on your approach or you will be flagged as spam.
This way you can come across a global audience who wants to be helped and thus you can show your authority by helping them.
Occasionally you can add your link to related post in the replies or your affiliate link but should notify the user about this.
Day 11: Reach out to influencers:
This is by far the best time to engage influencers in your niche by directly interacting with them. You can do it in the following ways:
A) Share their stuff: Everyone likes being helped and if your efforts are genuine they will notice you in no time.
B) Ask them questions: or thank them for a value their tweet provided. They are sure to reply you and from here you can take the relationship to the next level.
C) Cite their work in your post and let them know it: You cannot always rely on WordPress ping backs and track backs, moreover letting the person know you have cited their work personally can work wonders. So just fire a tweet to them about it. Chances are 10-15% of them will share your stuff across their channels as a sign of courtesy. What else we want!
Day 12: Start scheduling your tweets:
Now that you have analyzed your audience, their demography, the time they are most active on twitter, just tweet at a time convenient to them. I know it’s not possible to virtually satisfy all time zones and be awake till dawn because some of your followers might be having lunch at their side of the globe.
If you want to be use twitter like a pro use tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to schedule your tweets much prior. Hootsuite has a feature that schedules your tweets automatically to be published at a time when your followers are most responsive. It does so by analyzing many factors from your activity.
Day 13: Use Twitter lists to your benefits:
Twitter lists are an awesome feature of twitter that acts like a directory.You can use twitter lists to categorize followers, and people you follow based on a certain metric.
Use twitter lists to analyze how you are seen on twitter. Yes just see the lists that you are a part of and guess how you are perceived on the twitterland. Suppose you are a SEO personnel you should be a part of lists that relate to blogging, link building, SEO, or webmaster but if you are in a group called top ten movie reporters, its high time to change the content you share. Similarly if you want to increase your twitter reach just grab someone’s list and make it yours or go to someone’s public lists and follow people you like from there.
Here is the complete guide to using twitter lists.
Day 14: Leverage your hard earned twitter followers:
The main advantage of twitter is that it has much larger organic reach than Facebook. You can now use it to broadcast your content and product launches across the global arena and that too for free. We do have paid or promoted posts on twitter too but that’s when you have a solid target. You can also use public chat sessions like #ViralChat and #BufferChat to get in touch with like-minded people on twitter and later take the relationship to a professional level.
Over to you,
This was my 14 days guide to do better twitter or rather say do twitter like a pro. You are hardly going to need any other guide than this to start your twitter endeavors. Do tell what tips you follow to increase your twitter followers and to establish yourself as a pro on twitter, in the comment section below.
Recommended Reading for Twitter Success:
- The Complete Guide to Using Twitter Lists Like a Pro
- The Tao of Twitter, Revised and Expanded New Edition: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time
- Ten Things Every Successful Entrepreneur Knows that the Rest of the World Doesn't
- How to Get Your First 2,000 Followers on Twitter
Hey Swadhin,
Good stuffs and thanks for sharing! I totally dig in to the part of reaching out to influencers. That’s vital and by doing that, you’ll grow your visibility (of course).
Thanks for sharing man!
Hi Reginald,
I am glad you liked the post. I too agree and suggest reaching out to experts in your niche. That is very essential. And in blogging the seniors (read influential people) are very kind and cooperative. They help a lot. They are very active on twitter too so the chances of getting a response is darn high.
Thank you fir your awesome comment. Have a great day ahead Reginald. 🙂
Swandin, great tips on Twitter. I’m a big fan of Twitter lists as they keep me more organized and focused while using Twitter. I really like your idea on having a special landing page for those that come via Twitter. I hope to work on that one, thank you!
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for your kind words. Yes I do also like twitter lists. They can be used in just any which way you like. I use it to create a list of Hollywood actors I wish to meet before I die. LOL 😀
Creating a landing page is a very awesome idea. I have seen many Pro bloggers use it. That’s a great trick to funnel your leads from twitter. Do let me know how it works for you.
Have a great time ahead. 🙂
Hi Swadhin, and welcome to Ileane’s blog 🙂
That surely is an informative post about how we can improve our Twitter skills, and many of the things are new to me.
I’ve never followed anyone, bad on my part I know, but never had the time to look up influencers as such. Thankfully though, lots follow me and it’s only after I check their profiles do I follow them back, and that’s how I’ve built my connections. No, I’ve never run after numbers, nor even bought my twitter followers, as some people do, but those who come naturally, are because they like what you share, and they are bound to stay, isn’t it? Thus, there are hardly any unfollowers either. 🙂
I still have to try Hashtagify, something I learnt about rather recently, though I use a hashtags in my tweet too, but those are self-searched, trending ones that I usually keep aside in a notepad.
Yes, clicktotweet is wonderful, though as you already know Swadhin, I usually use a code for the same purpose, to avoid more plugins.
In all, wonderful post indeed, and it ought to be shared all over. 🙂
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead, both of you 🙂
Hello Harleena madam,
Thank you for your kind words. i am more than glad you liked the post.
On following too many followers: well its a strategy for the new users who want to have a sudden tipping in their follower count. I wouldn’t be honest if I said I did not do it, 😀 But trust me I have got great flowers and mine seem to be legitimate becuase I follow users from the same niche. Supose if I want bloggers I go to your profile and follow the active followers of you. If I want medical or health related followers I switch to any doctor or renowned health personality and follow his followers. Many follow back. 🙂
Not that It hasn’t backfired me I have ever been used by such people who follow me and then quickly unfollow the other day if I did not follow them back. I guess you too must have surely faced this.
Yes I know you use a code and Gosh I forgot to implement the trick here as well as the recent post on my blog too. :/
Have a great week madam and wish you a great time at Aha!NOW blogging community. 🙂
Hi Swadhin,
Great post !!! I came to know tools like social bro, un followers, hoot suite and buffer ill discover on the same.
Next thing ill check out the twitter analytics guide
Keep rocking
Thank you very much for lucrative post and valuable stuff
Siva
Hi Siva,
Thank you for those words of appreciation. I really would want to know how you’d utilize the twitter analytics. So do share your positive results.
Thanks of reading this post and glad it was helpful. 🙂
I had a business Twitter account with 10k followers and one day I just got banned. When I just started it I “bought” some followers from Fiverr and it was probably because of that. Anyway I was dissapointed to see it happen so I quit using Twitter, although I’m thinking about building another account for my bussiness
Hi Swadhin,
Twitter lists make your life easier. By using lists I connect with influencers minus all the noise. Yep, we all know twitter can be a noisy place if you depend on your main stream. Spam, scammers, and general online garbage seems to permeate the average main stream, especially if you follow a high number of folks.
Lists allow you to cut through the trash to get to the meat of the matter.
I see twitter as the Wild West of social media. 140 characters and a send button, and you can make a serious impact by sharing value, by RTing others, by engaging your lists and by being consistent and persistent.
I dig your advice here. You make a keen point about twitter being superior to Facebook on the organic reach front. I’ve kicked FB largely to the curb because twitter is A1 when it comes to attracting a large following, and if you engage them, well, the magic happens 😉
Thanks Swadhin for dropping the twitter 411! You inspired me to check in on my @replies now 😉
Ryan
Hi Ryan,
thank you for leaving such a kind comment of appreciation. I love your idea of using twitter lists. Twitter lists can help you do a complete array of thing in a convenient way.
And yes forming lists or groups of people that matter is the key to twitter power-using. Most pro twitter users do that to minus the clutter of twitter feeds which nowadays is filled with spammer auto-tweets and twitters own promoted tweets.
Thank you for agreeing with that one. And yes many pro bloggers don’t still hangout on facebook much, so are many customers. So it better to say them “hi” at their preferred domain of hanging out. Twitter has a professional touch to the tweets. Chances are it will soon modify its DM with additional features too.
I am more than glad that I could be of any help.
Thank you and have a good day ahead 🙂
Wow Swadhin, this is an immensely valuable post mate, and although I’ve been using Twitter for the last 5 years or so now, I’ve definitely picked up a few extra tips from your post today that I can apply to make using Twitter more productive.
Great idea with the dedicated landing page by the way, that’s one thing I’m going to try out, never thought of welcoming visitors from Twitter like that, and having a goal, it’s given me some great ideas. I guess you could do that with other social networking sites too huh?
I started using ClickToTweet a few months back to make some of the best quotes in my blog posts stand, out and of course to encourage people to tweet more, and that’s really working well for me, I love it, highly recommended.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t reach out to influencers as much as I should on Twitter, but since Twitter has been working for me more than Facebook have this year, I will definitely be spending a lot more time reaching out to others, promoting more content shared by others and engaging more on Twitter in the new year.
Also after months and months, I finally made the effort to change my profile photo and brand my page with a call-to-action cover photo.
Thanks again mate, have a great rest of the week.
Hi Fabrizio,
Thats a great duration on twitter! Congrats 🙂
I am glad you liked the post and it could be of some use to you.
Clicktotweet works wonders and I have seen blogs that had scarce twitter shares on their posts suddenly had a tipping graph on the number of shares for twitter.
People tend to share things when they are reminded to do that. SumoMe or the default twitter share code also works in the similar fashion.
Twitter is a great place to reach out to inflencers. I am glad I have made good connections with many bloggers who are influencers int heir own niches. All thanks to twitter.
It is not compulsory to do so, though. Sharing quality stuff and providing value to your followers will also bring you to the attention of influencers and potential customers.
I use Facebook and will always do, but that is for the personal hangouts because here in India people still don’t take twitter seriously. But for professional targets I can never ever give Twitter a miss.
I will be definitely checking out your twitter profile and already guess it would be looking awesome.
Have a great week ahead. 🙂
Thanks for this post Swadhin, I have a new site and have not yet set up my social accounts. I have bookmarked this post and your whole social media section. I will be following your advice.
Hi April,
Its great to know you are starting up a website. I would suggest you to bookmark all the usernames in leading social networks based on the name you have for your website as sometimes we would be negligent towards it while someone other would have taken your preferred username. Optimizing them can be done later!
Hmm, I’m not 100% sure I know what you mean, do you mean name my Social Accounts the same name as my Website? I’ve done that with Youtube & Google +, but the accounts/profiles themselves haven’t been completed. Truth is, as popular as social media is, I know I won’t have the time to keep up with them all. Thanks, I’ll return when I’ve set my Twitter Account.
Yeah you got that right becuase many times it happens if you forget to set your username on social networks people block it and ask more compensation. For ex: if your site is ABC you would like to register the account as ABC everywhere. In case you miss it people block it and you have to pay high for getting that back.
Thanks Swadhin, I didn’t know that would be one of the reasons you couldn’t get your chosen name. Blocked by People who want to make a buck! What some people will do for money.
Hi Swadhin, I like the idea of a special landing page for various social media accounts. Actually, I think I’d call it a greeting page but same difference. I’m working on that very thing for Instagram right now where they’ll be greeted as an Instagram follower and offered an Instagram worksheet. Each social network could have their own greeting page with an optin/subscriber’s gift created specifically for that audience.
I’ve been using Commun-it for several months and I’ve found it super helpful in keeping things as clean as possible. One disgusting method many people are using is to follow long enough for you to follow back, just to unfollow. Commun-it helps me find these low lives and unfollow them back and then ban them.
Hi Brian,
Yes we can ofcourse call it a greeting page. Whats in a name. What you call a rose would be called smell sweet by someone. Shakespeare. (Sorry if I messed up with the words 😀 )
So you have been leveraging instagram with this? That ‘s awesome. I still have to think about instagram though.
Commun-it is also good infact there are apps dime a dozen for this. I used followers.me some time back. They have an android app too.
Thank you for taking part in this post. Have a great week ahead 🙂
Hi Swadhin,
Good to see you here. I’d say that it is a perfect guide to advance the Twitter skills. Following the people who are interested to read our content is more essential and it would be good to unfollow the inactive users. Scheduling the tweets and content curation matters a lot in enhancing our presence on Twitter.
I’ve learned many stuff through your post, will try to implement them. Thanks for contributing this nice post for us 🙂
Hello Nirmala madam,
I am glad to see you here too. 🙂 I really am happy you liked the post.
I agree your idea of content curation our ultimate goal is to provide our followers with great stuff that will help them not to promote our blog posts only. So content curation as you said is a must. Similarly bombing them with 50 tweets one day and no tweets for the subsequent week is not going to help this way we can loose followers. So scheduling is a good idea.
Have a great day madam.:)
Great stuff Swadhin. I liked all the points and as of now I am going to unfollow the ones which inactive and non followers. Thanks for the timely reminder. 🙂
Hello Atish bro, I am glad you liked the post. Yes you should at times remove the clutter out of your following list as this will help you focus on the ones deserving. 🙂
Hi Swadhin,
This is indeed an informative page.
Though I joined twitter in its inception time
I still in the process of learning many things
In relation to twitter application,
I just applied #1 in the list and I changed my pics
in the face page. I am bookmarking this for my
further reference and application.
Thank you so much for this informative piece
Keep writing
Best Regards
~ Philip
Hi Philip,
I am glad I could be of any help to you. Its more than awesome that you have now decided to tap into the twitter resource. Good to know you applied #1 and hope you get the desired results.
Thanks for bookmarking the post. Have a great week ahead. 🙂
Thanks a lot for the tips and tricks about Twitter. This particular social media was never a huge deal in my business but now I see that I was wrong not using it.
Live and learn as they say 🙂
Hi Mira,
I am glad you liked the post. Hope it helps you and your business. Wishing you all the success!
Thanks for the tips – i am posting more and more content with images and certainly finding that the engagement is increasing – not surprising really when you get hit with a wall of tweets on your feed that the images really stick out.
I have struggled finding which are the best hashtags to use and typically use the same boring ones over again so will look at hashtagify.
I really must start using twitter lists – i keep reading that they are really useful but to date haven’t gotten around to it, your article has spurred me into action! Cheers
Hi Chris,
I am glad to know you are finding more engagement on twitter. That is great! Using images can dramatically increase your visibility because text tweets tend to get buried done the news feed.
Yeah you can use hashtagify to enhance your twitter #tags.
Hi Swadhin…Awesome stuff bro. I liked all the points and as of now I am going to unfollow the ones which inactive and non followers.
Thanks for remaining. 🙂
Hi Oykum,
thank you so much for the appreciation. I am glad you found it helpful. Looking forward to seeing your profile more clean
Great tips, thanks! Twitter is the one platform I’ve had trouble with, perhaps because of the character limit. I tend to be more long-winded!
Hi Jamie, Long winded is more fun these days. I love writing long tweets. You can use talltweets.com for this. Though there are others this will do your job hassle-free.
Alternatively you can try using images. They say images speak 1000 words and you can then tweet 1000 words through a single tweet. lol
Ya, I agree with Nirmala’s comment. Scheduling the tweets and content curation matters a lot in Twitter!!
Hi Avinash,
yeah you are right. 🙂
Good strategy, btw I am sick of just 2 followers. :3
Hi Swadhin,
Thanks for writing about twitter strategies. I agree with your all points, you have explained very nicely here.
I also use twitter to promote my blog and building relationship with other bloggers, its really helping me alot.
Hi Gaurav,
Glad you liked the post. So, twitter is helping you! What could be a better news. Work on it more and it will be ore rewarding. 🙂
Twitter is the one of the great social website and it is good for commenting and for discussing.
Twitter just don’t work for me, I’ve got 12.000++ followers but only gave me about 5% who clicked my link daily. I update it 20 times a day, but still bad result 🙁 any ideas why this could happen? So now … I still count on FB to get huge traffic for my website.
Hi Indrajit, twitter like FB is a social networking site and not a robotic place. I suggest you to build relationships with people and gain their following. a casual Hi and thank you can make a great difference. Also try sharing the stuff of others too. This will help you to bring yourself on other people’s radar and they too woll share your stuff.
I never thought about twitter to be this great, definitely i would pay lot of attention to my twitter account to drive more traffic to my website.
Thanks for taking time to write about it, Swadhin.
Hi Rahul, glad you found this interesting. Please go ahead and wish you all the luck for your twitter endeavor. 🙂
Great post, thank you! I like your SocialBro link, it is really useful!
Hi,
The reason I clicked for this article is ‘I’ve recently started using twitter’, and some times I find it really hard to use.
But twitter is really a great place to interact with people, because one thing I’ve notcied ‘People at Facebook have less interactions, when compares to twitter’.
I hope it will be a good journey.
Regards