I'm all about branding and making sure all my basis are covered when it comes to exposure online. Twitter is one of the best ways to grow your audience and be actively tweeting your latest posts, thoughts and connecting with other people.
One of the problems with Twitter is that it can take a while to get the necessary exposure for your account and have hundred or even thousands of followers listening to what you have to say. Twitter is actually a lot like blogging in the aspect that you must build up your following and have an audience that is listening to what you have to say.
I'll be the first to admit that I have pretty much ignored social media for the past several years. It wasn't til about two years ago that I tried to start using Facebook more, then around mid last year I started getting more active with my Twitter account.
A few months ago I finally changed my Twitter account from @moneyreign to @zacjohnson, which not only totally make sense but also helps my branding and allows people to find me easier.
Right now I'm sitting at over 21,000 Twitter followers, but I could probably be over 100,000 if I was actively growing out my account over the past several years.
My Experiment with Twiends is Working Well!
I'm sure many of you have already heard of (or using) the service called Twiends.com. It's a free service that is a great way to gain exposure for your Twitter account and getting interested users to start following you. You can also use the service to start finding and following other interesting accounts as well.
Here's a look at what Twiends looks like when you first login.
The concept behind Twiends is very simple and effective.
Twiends allows people to join their site for free (now with several million users) and once they are setup with an account they will get some “seeds”. “Seeds” are used as their method for getting people to follow other people through their service. If you follow other users on Twiends they will get more seeds, then you can use these same seeds to get more exposure  and followers for your Twitter account.
Recommended Reading: Twitter Power 3.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
It's also important to note that Twiends does not sell followers, they only offer exposure. This is important because it's up to other users to follow other Twitter members, which means they are real and the quality is there.
So how the heck did I get 19,345 seeds in my account you might be asking? Simple… I am using their VIP program that allows me to purchase more seeds and exposure through their site. I've listed a few of their different packages below.
You don't need to buy seeds through Twiends, but it will make the process a lot faster. The good thing is that their seed purchase packages come in all sizes, so anyone would be able to test their results and see if it's worth it. The more seeds you buy, the lower the average price of a seed will cost.
My Twitter Growth Over Time
The best way to tell if a service is working is by being able to measure results. TwitterCounter.com allows you to plug in your Twitter account and see your growth over the past several days, weeks or months.
I've been using Twiends for the past year now and you can see quite the steady increase of followers as a result of their site. I'm also giving out 10 seeds for every new follower. This is the most that you can offer through Twiends.
You can also see your own set of Twiends stats when you are logged into their site. In addition to Twiends I've been testing a few other sites for increasing my Twitter following, but none of them have had the same quality of success.
Tips for Increasing Your Twitter Following
Anyone can increase their Twitter following through the use of Twiends, but keeping your Twitter followers is another mission in itself. It's easy for someone to join Twiends and follow your account and get a few seeds from it, but if you aren't providing any value then they are going to unfollow you right away.
Here are some tips to use when focusing on your Twitter account.
- Have a quality photo of yourself and a customer Twitter background. This will make you more interesting and more likely that you aren't a fake bot account.
- Don't buy Twitter followers from other services online. These are usually garbage and fake accounts just to inflate your numbers.
- Send out Tweets often, but don't go crazy. With many people following hundreds of users it's easy for your Tweets to get lost in the mix.
- Tweet real content and not just your most recent blog posts. Mix your Tweets up with real content, questions, thoughts and also respond to others.
- Replying to other people's questions and comments through Twitter is a great way to gain extra exposure for your account.
Follow these tips and be sure to sign up to Twiends.com and watch your Twitter following grow through out the year!
I agree with you Zac. I have used Twiends and I love that place. Thank you for reminding me again about it.
Great post Zac. But can you also elaborate on how the engagement to your tweets have improved since then? I may be wrong but I feel people who follow others just for the sake of getting followed are not the right audience to go after. Twitter in any case has very low clickthroughs. For example, consider this tweet from SocialMediaExaminer – a popular social media website with over 131000 followers: https://twitter.com/smexaminer/status/421295737629339648.
The bit.ly link shared in this link has apparently been clicked 40 times. That’s such a low click through for such a large following. Don’t you think so?
Anand
This will depend on what your audience and focus is. My focus is to gain reach and exposure for my sites and brand. Many Twiends users are very internet savvy, so they are the audience I am trying to connect with. With Twitter advertising and marketing you need to continually tweet and tweet often, look at what @jeffbullas is doing with his account.
although this sounds a good way to gain followers and readers, isn’t it going against what we have been told about getting prospects interested: To interest them on an individual by individual basis? By getting someone else ‘seeds’, do they automatically read your blog, and want to learn more?
Twitter marketing is more about your reach than your target audience. You can send out as many messages as you want through Twitter and it won’t cost you any money (whether you have 100 followers or 100,000). If you were to spend money on Facebook Fan Page followers this would be a different story. Your average message send out through FB is only seen by 16-20% of your actual followers. With that said, I would rather have a Twitter account with 25,000 followers with some people that have no idea what I do, then discover me, then only having 5,000 die hard fans following me. Either way your message is getting out there to both (through Twitter).
Even I can create a fake id and register at Twiends and follow many. I don’t think I would be getting real genuine followers from Twiends, then what’s the ultimate use?
Hi Zac,
I also kind of neglected social media and specially Twitter in the first year of my blogging. But in the beginning of 2013, I got more active on Twitter than any other social media platform. I have some 600 followers and mostly I made via interaction and engagement on the Twitter itself.
I will definitely give Twiends a try and see for myself if it works. Though the concept look great.
Thanks for sharing this idea with us.
Regards,
Vineet
Interesting post Zac.
I wasn’t aware of Twiends will have to look into it further.
At the moment I’m just following around 30 people in my niche every day and seeing decent follow backs.
Twitter traffic doesn’t convert very well for me straight off the bat but the exposure you can get from people re-tweeting your content, especially influential bloggers in your niche, is good because whilst it might not convert initially there’s the potential for them to return back to your site at a later date and become a fan.
People are more likely to pay attention to you when someone influential they already respect and follow mention you.
I make sure not to follow too many people as well. I don’t know how any active Twitter account can really view over 1-5k followers… just way too much activity that isn’t relevant to your account/following.
I’ve tried Twiends in the past but like some of the other commenters I worried about the quality of the followers I’d be getting. That said, I use Tweet Adder now quite a bit and – used ethically – I think it offers a better quality of follower. That said, attracting followers in this way is rather slower than Twiends.
Thanks for sharing this info about Twiends, Zac. I haven’t actually tried this Twiends but if it does give results then I might try this one. Just my concern is the quality of the followers as what stated by others.
Hello,
Well yes I’ve tried twiends many times and It’s really great platform for getting hell of real followers and that too in short time.
Thanks for share
Yes you are right sir Twitter is one of the best ways to grow your audience and be actively tweeting your
latest posts, thoughts and connecting with
other people. I love this article its best for complete guid about this social site marketing.
hi Zac,
thanks for sharing such a nice info . I have never used Twiends now i am going to try it.
Can you please tell me any tool like Twiends for reddit.
Quite a resourceful article, i have personally used Twiends during my earlier days of joining Twitter and the result was great, there are other sites like addmefast that i have also tried, but i discovered that the best type of followers are those that followed you out of their interest on you, their engagement in retweeting or engaging in any other thing on Twitter is always better than those who followed just because they needed to earn tokens to use in listing their own accounts to be followed. So i have long abandoned using this method in growing my Twitter followers, i am now dedicated to providing quality articles that will solve my audience problems and naturally people follow me out of their interests in me or my articles on Twitter.
I’ve seen and experienced the same. Twiends allows you to geotarget your exposure, which many other networks don’t.
I don’t like this kind of services, no matter which web 2.0 portal we’re analysing. Honestly I think this may be useful a little for mass audience blogs, but as for the others, expert blogs, focused on a niche, it will not bring any value added…
I have to disagree on this topic. You can explode your twitter followers for time being with this method, not loyal, consistent followers.
You are giving them the greed of points to follow you. They do not follow you because you are interesting in their niche.
So I will disagree in any of the points above.
Zac – Thanks for info, as a new user of Twitter this is very helpful because it has been difficult to get followers so far. As a follow up question, does Twiends allow me to search for relevant followers (people/business in my market) to give out seeds to?
Thank you!
Twiends is the best and fastest method to get followers. I used it so many times and everytime i gives a good results and proven to be best.
Thanks BBT for sharing.
hi i have tried and have increased twitter followers,but one thing that i must mention is the niche related followers….and which is hard to find from this community.
Hi Zac, great article! I’ve been looking for ways to get more Twitter followers and have stumbled across many options but this is the first I have hear of Twiends. I guess I just wasn’t looking hard enough for different ways of getting Twitter followers.
Thanks for sharing. I’m definitely going to check out Twiends as soon as I’m finished with this comment.
I had never heard of this service Twiends.com before. This sounds really amazing. This would be great to know people on Twitter from your own interest and niche. I always used to wonder whether one such tool even exists. Thanks for sharing here.
Good to know that it worked for you 🙂 Its time to implement! Lets see what happen. Thanks for sharing such a terrific post wit us. Appreciate it.
Zac the option of geotargeting on Twiends makes perfect sense but where I have my reservations if if the followers you get are actually of any benefit since most of them would simply be interested in following you because of the seeds they are going to get which they will use and promote their blog
I have try using Twiends in the pass it didn’t workout for me but this time I am going try it again with your tips thanks
Though I had joined Twiends, I didn’t know it could be so valuable. After reading here, now I shall explore more there for increasing followers. Thanks for sharing.