Twitter is a great tool to get your target audience to discover you, your site and the value your site creates. It helps establish a link between you and your audience and can be a great part of your online branding and marketing strategy.
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 site. But make sure you don’t start following people who don’t have interest in your subject as the effect of having many uninterested followers will not be as good. Here are some recommended ways to get more Twitter followers that are interested in your topic, product or services:
● Track down twitterers that are interested in your 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 power users in your field Click on their profiles, browse their followers, start following them 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. When you follow someone, you will be listed in their profile in the “Followers” list so they will have a chance to take a look at your profile, see what you tweet about, what your interests are and what the URL of your site is. Another good thing about following people first, is that 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 power users in your field. Twitter power users have a lot of followers and influence. They usually scan Twittersphere 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 in time develop into loyal readers and customers.
● Promote your Twitter account on your site, in blog comments, forum postings and in your other social media profiles. Just as you would promote your site URL, 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 in 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 as they have a high number of people interested in their tweets.
To adjust your following to followers ratio you can take a look in “Following” section of your Twitter profile. Underneath each twitterer that follows you back, you will see the “Direct Message” link. If you want to have a better ratio of following to followers you would need to remove some of the people that you follow but they do not follow you back. Another free
option is Your Twitter Karma which lets you unfollow those who aren’t following you.
Customize your Twitter account
● Customize your Twitter profile and make it more real and personal. Add your picture, your site 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 picture and publish related content on each. This way people will recognize you easier, and will know what you are about and what you stand for.
● 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 set your tweets to be published at specific times.
Now you are ready to go. Start posting your tweets and start browsing around for people in your target audience. Be consistent in growing your followers. Make sure all your tweets are of excellent quality and make them all relevant to your field. In time your reputation will grow, twitterers will start following you automatically, and your site traffic referred by Twitter will increase.
