Fridays with Vicky 59

Twitter is great, but it’s crowded. How do you find and connect with the people that are actually interested in what you have to say and share?

I would rather have a lower number of followers but very targeted followers. People that when I tweet find my content interesting, helpful and engage with it. Than a large number of followers that have no interest in my content what so ever.

What about you? Do you want a great amount of followers or do you want targeted followers?

I went from not being very active at all, getting 6 new Twitter followers in August 2015, to getting 2065 new targeted followers so far in February 2016.

These tips that I’m sharing below, works!

 

10 Things That Will Help You Grow Targeted Twitter Followers

 

1. Why Do You Tweet?

The first thing to think about is WHY are you tweeting? Do you want to drive traffic to your blog? Do you want to create brand awareness? Do you want to meet and engage with people? Do you want to sell a product?

I know that when I first signed up with Twitter, I didn’t do much with it. I knew I “had to be on social media” but since I didn’t have a clear reason to why I was there, I soon lost interest. I had an account but did nothing with it.

Today, years later, I have a clear reason to be on Twitter. I engage, enjoy helping others with online marketing and I have a lot of fun with it.

Knowing why your are on Twitter, is crucial to be able to target the right people, engage and be in it for the long run.

WHY do YOU tweet?

 

2. Create Awesome Content and Tweets 

You want to creat great content that your followers and potential followers find valuable. If you do, your content will be shared and recommended by others.

So what is considered great content? Look at what others are sharing in your niche. What kind of tweets are getting a lot of retweets and engagement? Are they educational, entertaining, famous quotes or maybe video? Find what your followers and potential followers wants and give it to them.

 

3. Follow / Follow Back People in Your Niche

This might be obvious but follow and follow back people that find your niche relevant and interesting will be important to get relevant followers. To organize your followers even better you can create lists for specific groups.

Under your profile there will be a tab for lists. Click that, to be able to set up a new list. A great feature is to be able to make the list public or private.

When you get a new follower you can then add the person to the right list.

 

4. Follow People that Follow Niche Leaders

Who are following the niche leaders? Would these people be interested in your tweets and content as well? Follow them and hopefully they follow back.

So if you are blogging and tweeting about backlinks, follow the people that follow Brian Dean from Backlinko. If you are all about podcasts, follow the people that follow Pat Flynn. If you tweet about soccer, David Beckham might have some followers that will enjoy your tweets.

Since it can be hard and very time consuming to find targeted people through keywords and just a search, this is a good way to find relevant followers.

 

5. Take use of Apps

There are many different apps that can help you with your Twitter activities. You can use an app like Crowdfire or Buffer to organize your followers and schedule your tweets.

Crowdfire has many benefits, these are just a few:

1. Schedule content. Nobody is on Twitter 24/7, but by using a tool to help you schedule your tweets, it may look like it. This just allows you to have a presence and share content even when you are not on there. I find this to be an invaluable tool, that saves me a lot of time.
2. Unfollow people that don’t follow you (unless you are David Beckham, Gary Veynerchuck or Pat Flynn) ok, there are a few more that I follow that don’t follow back. You do want to know who follows you back though so you can decide if you want to keep following that person, this tool will help with that.
3. Inactive followers, meaning that people that has not been active on twitter for say 3 months, the tool will detect them and you can decide to follow or unfollow. If they are not active, reading tweets you might want to unfollow.
4. Keyword follow, this is a helpful search to follow people with similar interests.

This tool saves me a lot of time.

 

6. Engage with Your Followers

If people see that you are active, that you tweet on a regular basis, that you interact and engage with others then they are more likely to follow you back, if the content at the same time interest them.

Nobody wants to follow people that are only on Twitter to sell their own stuff, do you agree? To be honest that’s kind of annoying when all you see in the Twitter feed is sales pitches. Engage, interact, ask questions, retweet and care about your followers and you will see much better result. If you do this, with time people will come to you.

If you want more tips on engaging with your followers read – 7 Things to Do When Engaging on Twitter to Create Lasting Relationships

 

7. Use Hashtags Effectively

A tweet filled with hashtags #does #not #look #inviting. I have found that one or two hashtags works best. If you use a keyword in the tweet you will not need a hashtag for that specific word, it will rank for it anyway.

Hashtags does come in handy though targeting specific groups. If I would tweet this post I might add the hashtag #mompreneur at the end of the tweet. It’s a post that would go well with that target group.

 

8. Use Twitter Off Twitter

This can be both online and offline. Add your twitter tag on your business cards and other business related items.

Make it easy to follow you from your website. People that already have a connection with you elsewhere, will probably be happy to follow you.

 

9. Use Twitter Cards

This is very helpful when people tweet your content. Instead of just getting the 140 characters you can also attach a photo, video or other media experience.

When implementing a twitter card you make it easy for others to give their followers a better experience since a ”twitter card” will be added to the tweet.

 

10. What About Auto Messages – Do or Do Not… Send Them Out?

Creating a follow on Twitter takes time and using those automated messages, can be tempting.

The question is should you?

I’ve been playing around with it to see if I could use automated messages to start conversations. I wanted to see if I send out a short, sweet message, if people got back with me.

Just want to make one thing clear, I never suggest you sending out buy MY…follow ME… download MY… retweet MY… as a first initial message. Make it short and sweet, say hello and invite to conversation.

I have found that a short message, just saying hi and asking my new follower a question works wonders, even though it is automated. I pay an extra monthly fee with Crowdfire to remove the “send by Crowdfire tag”.  So all people see is my short message.

People interested respond and it is often the beginning of a great conversation. I wish I had time to personally say hi to all my followers but it’s very time consuming.This allows to have conversations with people that are truly interested.

What’s your thoughts on automated messages?

There we have it, 10 Things That Will Help You Grow Targeted Twitter Followers. 

As always I want to hear from you. How do you grow targeted followers on Twitter or other social media? Please share with us below,

Have a productive day,

Vicky

Oh and if we are not connected on Twitter, feel free to do so here.