How to grow the number of your Twitter followers

Twitter is a great tool to get your target audience discover you, your blog and the value your blog creates. It helps establish a link between you and your audience in a non-threatening way and can be a great part of your online blog branding and marketing strategy.

This article will focus on how get a lot of Twitter followers and new readers to your blog.

How to increase number of your Twitter followers

Concentrate on building a large number of followers. The more people that follow you and know what you are about, the more clicks and visits you will get to your blog. But make sure you don’t start following people who don’t have interest in your subject.

Here are some recommended ways to get more followers that are interested in the topic you are blogging about:

• Track down twitterers that are interested in your blog field by using Twellow. Search for relevant keywords or go into the relevant directory and get a list of interested twitterers. Rank according to “followers count” to see the leaders in your field. Click on their profiles, browse their followers and see if some of them are interested in following you.

An easy way to get people to follow you is to start following them first. Some twitterers have their accounts setup to follow all the followers, so when you follow them, they will automatically follow you back.

• Twitter-bait. Tweet to or about Twitter leaders in your field. They have a lot of followers and they scan Twitter for people talking about them and their products. If they find your tweet interesting and respond to you, your username will be exposed to all of their followers. Some of these might click on your username, start following you and start reading your blog.
• Promote your Twitter account on your blog, in blog comments, forum postings and in your other social media profiles. Just as you would promote your blog, put your Twitter username everywhere and expose it to as many people in your target group as possible.

Ratio of following vs. followers

People tend to place large significance at the ratio of the number of followers you have and the number of people you follow. Following a disproportionately higher number of people than having followers will give a bad image and you might find it hard getting new followers. Twitterers with more even numbers or a higher number of followers, are seen as more trustworthy and influential. Use Your Twitter Karma to unfollow those who aren’t following you to make your numbers more even.

Customize your Twitter account

• Customize your Twitter profile with your picture, your blog URL and description. Most twitterers will check your profile to decide to follow you or not, or to learn more about you when they read some of your interesting tweets.

Make sure to be consistent in your branding on different social media sites. Try to use same nickname, same avatar and publish related content on each.

• Register TweetLater to add additional tools to your Twitter account. You can set your account to automatically respond to your new followers with a personal message, you can automatically follow people that follow you and you can submit tweets to be published at specific times.

Now you are ready to go. Post your first tweet and start browsing around for like minded people. Be consistent in growing your followers. Make sure all your tweets are of excellent quality and make them all relevant to your blog subject. In time your reputation will grow, twitterers will start following you automatically, and your blog traffic referred by Twitter will increase.

Twitter Marketing E-Book

For much more information on Twitter, check out my “Twitter Marketing E-book: How to go viral on Twitter“. The e-book includes all the tips on how I use Twitter to build my authority, drive traffic to my blog and get customers. Enjoy twittering!

Image by: Catr