While it’s been a few years since Twitter was the trendiest social network, Twitter is still a powerful social media platform. Twitter’s growth has all but stagnated. Yet with 300,000,000+ users growing a following on Twitter is still a worthy endeavor.
Aside from promoting your brand or product, Twitter is also great for absorbing concise knowledge from some of the greatest minds on the internet. Twitter is also a powerful networking tool if used correctly. Of course, without any followers, Twitter isn’t going to help you land freelance gigs or push more sales.
If you’re new to Twitter and need to build up your following, here are some of the things you’ll want to do to get your first 100 followers:
#1 Follow Others Daily
If you want to get more followers, a great way to do so is by following new users everyday. When you follow others they get a notification. Many of these people you follow will reciprocate and follow you as well.
While this may not be a productive use of time for someone that already has 1,000,000 followers, it can be a great way to go from 21 or 34 followers to 100 or 245 followers. Let’s make a few important notes on this strategy, however.
The first thing that’s important to understand is that following and unfollowing too many accounts each day may lead to your account getting frozen or banned. The other thing that’s important to note is that you’ll want to follow people that are in your industry.
By following people in your industry there’s a much higher chance they’ll be interested in the things you post and feel inclined to follow you back.
#2 Engage With Others
Another important strategy in building up your Twitter following is engaging with the content of others. If I like your Tweets, comment on them, and retweet your content, it’s going to get your attention.
There’s a good chance you’ll become interested in my content and share it as well. As Dale Carnegie says, “To be interesting, be interested.”
The same thing applies on Twitter. If you want others to pay attention to you, it’s necessary for you to pay some attention to them as well. Twitter is a place to have discussions, not merely another channel to broadcast your message. If you stop listening as soon as you’ve said something, you’ll quickly find others stop listening to you as well.
#3 Promote Others
As I alluded to before, promoting others makes them more likely to share your stuff. If you share someone’s video, they’re going to feel inclined to give your Tweets some attention as well.
Another good idea is to promote others with your content. If you want attention from the founder of Treehouse (a membership site company that offers programming courses), you may want to write a blog post titled 5 Reasons I Enjoy Learning with Treehouse or The Vital Feature Treehouse Needs to Adopt to Stay Successful in 2018.
If you tweet a post like that to Treehouse’s founder, he’s almost certain to read it. People love reading stuff about themselves and the things they’ve done. Writing a blog post called Advice for LeBron James or Why Donald Trump Needs to do X is unlikely to be personally read by your target figure simply because that person is simply too difficult to reach without a connection.
Small to fairly large figures are surprisingly reachable, however, if you can offer them some sort of value. Offer a small to medium figure value, and there’s a great chance they’ll follow you. Even better yet, they’ll likely share your content with their followers which will lead to more potential followers for you.
#4 Leverage Other Social Media Platforms
Creating a Twitter Account in 2017 puts you at a disadvantage compared to professionals and businesses that began using Twitter a decade ago. Fortunately, there is a way to largely combat this disadvantage. You can leverage other social media followings you’ve built.
By promoting your Twitter account on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and/or other social media platforms, you can siphon attention you’ve already built on other platforms onto your new Twitter account. This allows you to greatly jumpstart your new Twitter account’s growth.
#5 Link to Your Twitter on your blog, Youtube, email signature, etc
By linking to your Twitter account in a number of places, you’ll build awareness around your new Twitter account. This allows people who would be interested in following you on Twitter to easily find and follow you.
Conclusion
By applying these tips for getting your first 100 (or more!) followers on Twitter, you’ll be off to a great start. Building a following is always slow in the beginning, but once you have a few hundred or thousand followers, you’ll find organic growth quickly pick up.