{"id":634,"date":"2015-10-27T14:00:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitalmarketingpro.net\/?p=634"},"modified":"2021-06-29T08:24:56","modified_gmt":"2021-06-29T05:24:56","slug":"how-to-get-more-real-followers-on-twitter-organically-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/how-to-get-more-real-followers-on-twitter-organically-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get More Real Followers on Twitter Organically (case study)"},"content":{"rendered":"
During the last 30 days I got 400 new targeted followers on twitter, got listed many times, my tweets were retweeted hundreds of times and this happened by using no other tools than the native twitter app. What you will learn in this post is how to get more real followers on twitter using this method and how to achieve even better results with the help of a couple of tools.<\/span><\/p>\n Twitter is one of the most popular social networks around especially among digital marketers not only because it\u2019s easy and quick to use, but also because it is used widely by industry leaders and due to the recent deal between Google and Twitter<\/a><\/strong> that gives an additional SEO advantage for some twitter users.<\/p>\n In order to utilize any of the twitter advantages you need followers and in particular you need a lot of real followers that will interact with your tweets. Getting any type of followers is easy, you can either buy them (not recommended) or just follow anyone you want and some will follow you back.<\/p>\n The thing is, it\u2019s not only a numbers game i.e how many followers you have but it\u2019s more of a an interests game i.e. being followed by people that share the same interests with you so that they are more likely to like and share your tweets or even follow a link to your website.<\/p>\n I have my twitter account (@reliablesoftnet<\/a><\/strong>) since 2013 and currently there are approximately\u00a08000 people following me. At first I was using twitter intensively for a number of months and managed to get a good number of followers (more on this below), but after that I did not actively used it.<\/p>\n I did use buffer to send out tweets on a daily basis but that\u2019s all I did until last month. The average growth per month was about 100 new followers.<\/p>\n Last month I decided to be an active twitter user and by following the method you will read below, I got around 400 new followers, many retweets and mentions.<\/p>\n A few screenshots that show the details.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I started the experiment my twitter followers where 7505 and in 30 days they increased to 7944.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Besides the increase in followers I was listed many more times than the previous months. ‘Listed’ means that other twitter users have added my account in their public lists so that they can easily follow my new tweets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My twitter influence also increased dramatically during the days I was running my experiment.<\/p>\n I mentioned above that twitter is not only a numbers game but is more closer to an interests game. This means that in order to get followers that will actually care about your tweets, you need to narrow down your niche and go after people with a very specific profile.<\/p>\n Before starting this experiment I decided that I would go after people that tweet about #digitalmarketing. Our industry is made up of a number of related niches like SEO, social media, content marketing, blogging etc but my profile and tweets are more relevant to Digital Marketing<\/b><\/a> so these people are closer to my target audience.<\/p>\n You may think that the niches I mentioned above are all part of digital marketing and this is true but I wanted to focus on the people that tweet specifically about digital marketing (using the particular hashtag), since I noticed that these people have interests that match mine and tweet about things I would normally tweet.<\/p>\n By segmenting your audience at this level, you get better results and it\u2019s the first step in becoming an authority twitter user for that niche.<\/p>\n After you narrow down your niche, the next step is to make sure that your twitter profile is optimized.<\/p>\n This means having a profile picture (a real picture of you and not an icon or animal), a good description about what you do including the hashtags you have selected to target.<\/p>\n If you take a look at my profile you will see that I have a small description of what I do and the hashtags I am using so that everyone that will check my profile will understand what to expect from me in terms of tweets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Next, is to actually find which users to follow. The best and easiest way to do that is to open twitter\u00a0and search for your hastag(s). Scan though the results and start following people, retweeting the ones that you find relevant for your audience or even mark some as favourite so as to get the attention of other people.<\/p>\n When you re-tweet or mark a tweet as favourite, the other person gets notified and some of them will check your profile and follow you.<\/em><\/p>\n When selecting the users to follow, make sure that they meet the guidelines below, because this will increase the chances of them following you back.<\/p>\n Being selective of who to follow increases the number of people that will follow you back. If you select anyone without doing the above checks soon enough you will end up with a big number of following and not enough followers.<\/p>\n Another technique that I used that proved to be very effective was to tweet a number of times per day using the hashtag #digitalmarketing.<\/p>\n If you are not sure <\/i>what are hashtags and how to use them<\/a><\/i><\/b>\u00a0read my previous article that explains everything in detail.<\/i><\/p>\n As you will read below, I also use buffer to share some of my tweets but for this case study I had twitter open while I was working and every couple of hours I published a new tweet. The tweets were not all from my websites but I tweeted from a number of sources and also retweeted from the stream.<\/p>\n Every time I did this I noticed that immediately afterwards I got new followers, retweets and listed in different lists. It is important to understand that your potential twitter users are in different timezones and by tweeting several times per day you can see which times work better for you and also reach a larger audience.<\/p>\n A good practice is to tweet in real-time when you are awake and use a scheduling tool to send out tweets while you are sleeping.<\/p>\n Besides having the hashtag in my tweets I also included images that make the tweets more visual and interesting.<\/p>\n The chances that popular and \u2018famous\u2019 twitter users will follow you back are minimum but you still have to follow them for many reasons.<\/p>\n For starters, you want to know what they are tweeting about and find opportunities to retweet their posts or even send them a message. They are more likely to reply to you on twitter than any other medium.<\/p>\n Second, a lot of people (as you will see below), scan their profiles and find people to follow and you want to be one of them.<\/p>\n Third, most of the times their tweets go viral and get attention so by retweeting these popular tweets, you also increase your chances of getting your tweets retweeted and reach more people.<\/p>\n Fourth, I will cover this in more details in another post but having a list of twitter users that are industry leaders can prove very useful when you want to advertise on twitter by targeting specifically those people.<\/p>\n While your goal is to get as many followers as you can, don\u2019t forget to follow back. When someone follows you check their profile and if they are a good fit (see conditions above), follow them back.<\/p>\n What I do is check my twitter notifications every couple of hours and follow back interesting people. In case I missed someone, I find them later using one of the tools I am using (keep reading and you will see below the details).<\/p>\n Following a number of people is not bad provided that you have more followers than following. This makes your account more \u2018authoritative\u2019 and in the long term this can prove to be very important.<\/p>\n Have also in mind that many people use tools to manage their followers so if you don\u2019t follow them back they will unfollow you in a few days.<\/p>\n Twitter (and social media in general) is about connecting with people so it is important to reply to mentions or thank someone that retweeted your message. I don\u2019t use any tools for this because the idea is not to spam users with \u2018thank you messages\u2019 but to really connect with them in person. See an example below:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The above technique will get a good number of new targeted followers per month. I managed to get 400 real followers in just 30 days but if you follow the above steps with discipline and consistency you can get better results.<\/p>\n If you want to speed up the process and gain more real followers, you can make use of a couple of tools. The first one is buffer which is used for scheduling tweets and the other one is manageflitter.<\/p>\n Why Buffer? <\/b>There are many reasons to use buffer to schedule your tweets. For starters it\u2019s easy to use, it has a number of scheduling options and it integrates well with chrome, twitter and many other tools and you can also use it for free.<\/p>\nCase Study – Background information<\/h2>\n
How to get real followers on twitter without using any tools<\/h2>\n
Step 1 – Narrow your niche<\/h3>\n
Step 2 – Optimize your twitter profile<\/h3>\n
Step 3 – Find potential users to follow in your niche<\/h3>\n
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Step 4 – Anything you tweet should be optimized for your niche<\/h3>\n
Step 5 – Find and follow industry leaders<\/h3>\n
Step 6 – Don\u2019t forget to follow back<\/h3>\n
Step 7 – Reply to mentions or retweets<\/h3>\n
How to get even more real followers on twitter<\/h2>\n