Here’s the thing about Twitter: it’s really fun.
Ok, that’s not the only thing. In addition to being really fun, Twitter can be a valuable part of any marketing strategy. It’s a conversational medium that’s ideal if you want to better connect with your audience.
Also, there are stats to back up Twitter’s power as a marketing tool. 69% of Twitter users have bought from an SMB they have seen or engaged with on Twitter and 93% are planning to purchase from one.
Like most social media platforms, Twitter is most powerful if you have engaged followers. And we’re not talking about a huge following of bots and fake accounts. (Seriously, don’t buy followers. It’s a surefire way to ruin any marketing strategy.)
You need a strong, active engaged audience of real people connecting with you on Twitter. How do you do that? After all, Twitter has 152 million daily active users. There are millions of tweets going out every day. It’s kind of hard to grow your audience when so much is happening on the platform.
Luckily we have tested and tried tons of Twitter tactics to grow our Twitter followers and we’ve learned what you should try and what you should skip (looking at you, buying followers).
1. Make time for engagement
Like we mentioned above, Twitter is a conversational platform. Twitter’s design and functionality is structured towards conversations more than any other platform. You have to make time for engagement, whether it’s retweeting, liking or replying to tweets.
We recommend taking 5-10 minutes every day to dedicate to engaging with your community. It doesn’t matter what time a day it is but spend some time responding to comments, thanking users for their retweets, retweeting other people’s conversations or replying to other tweets and joining in on their conversations.
If you’re worried about getting stuck in the black hole of Twitter when engaging, our next tip is for you!
2. Use Twitter lists to engage
Twitter lists are an underrated tool but if you embrace them, they can make you much more effective at engaging on Twitter. Twitter can get overwhelming, especially if you follow a lot of people. It’s easy to say you’re going to engage on Twitter for 10 minutes and before you know it, you’ve spent hours just scrolling through Twitter reading everyone else’s tweets (….not that we’re talking from experience or anything 
).
But if you use Twitter lists, you can easily segment all your followers so you can engage with just the right people on a regular basis. You can create Twitter lists based on any specific group that is important to you. Here are a few list options:
- Customers/Clients
- Competitors
- People who retweet you
- Partners
- News Sources
- Influencers
- Prospects
- Twitter chat participants or hosts
When you create Twitter lists, you can easily make sure you’re engaging with the audiences you want to be engaging with on a regular basis. For example, our customers and clients are our highest priority so we engage with that list every single day. Influencers and partners are less of a priority for us so we engage with them only 2-3 times a week. Competitors are among our lowest priority but we still like to be able to see what the competition is doing so we check that list periodically.
3. Join Twitter chats
Of all the options on this list, we think Twitter chats are the most fun way to grow your audience! Twitter chats are like virtual meetups around specific topics. Each Twitter chat will have its own hashtag and the host will ask questions and Twitter chat participants can share their answers, comment on other participant’s answers and, in general, chat about the topic.
Many hosts will host their Twitter chats on a regularly recurring basis, such as every week or month. We recommend finding a few Twitter chats you like to attend regularly so you can get to know the host and the other regular participants.
If you really want to grow your audience from Twitter chats, make sure that you follow the other participants and engage with them outside of the set Twitter chat time. This is how you build those lasting relationships. Twitter lists can really help with this!
4. Tweet often
This is kind of a no-brainer but it’s worth adding on here. Unlike Facebook or Instagram where you can get away with posting 1-2x a day, most tweets only last a matter of minutes on the timeline so you have to increase your frequency to give your message a chance of being seen.
There’s no set number of tweets that you should post every day. In fact, there seem to be some conflicting studies about what is the right number. We saw everything from tweeting once to tweeting 50 times a day!
You don’t need to tweet 50 times a day but you should aim to tweet more than 10 times a day. It’s easier to use a scheduling tool like MeetEdgar to schedule out a few tweets every day than to use your engagement time to natively tweet a few more. That gives you a good balance of content and keeps you consistent.
5. Curate content and tag others
We’re going to give a quickie lesson on how the Twitter algorithm works in 2020. Someone doesn’t have to be following you to see your tweet in their feed. The first section of the Twitter algorithm is based on relevance and this can include tweets from someone you’re not following if it’s been engaged with by a user you do follow or engage with.
We often say if you want to grow your audience, focus on engaging your current audience and these next few tips fit right in with that.
Content curation is a smart way to keep a consistent flow of content and if you tag the original creator or author of the content you curated, you’ll increase the chance that they’ll like, retweet or respond to their tweet. All of this makes your tweet more engaging and increases the likelihood your tweet will show up on the timeline of someone who doesn’t follow you but follows the original creator.
A little extra tip here: make sure you’re engaging with other people who share your content. Retweet their tweets, thank them for the share and like it.
6. Tag people & start conversations
If you have been joining Twitter chats and actively engaging on Twitter, then you can start creating your own conversations with your followers. One popular way to do this is to ask a question about your industry or niche or even just a fun icebreaker and then tag your Twitter friends to answer. This will start a threaded discussion
The trick to starting conversations is that you can’t do it without building up some goodwill. If people have never interacted with you before, they’re not going to immediately start answering questions. It’s important to build up that rapport with other Twitter users so they are familiar with you before you start asking them to join in on conversations.
7. Post images, videos & GIFs
Adding some eye-catching visuals to your tweets is another way to grab some attention and possibly increase engagement and your reach. And don’t take our word for it. Check out these stats:
- Tweets with video are some of the most engaging content on Twitter and get 10x more engagement.
- Tweets with images get 150% more retweets than tweets without images.
- Tweets with GIFs get 55% more engagement than those without.
Just make sure your video, image or GIF relates to the content your tweeting. Don’t bait your followers into engaging by using an unrelated visual!
8. Format your tweets to be eye-catching
Twitter moves fast. 500 million tweets are sent a day, which is about 6 tweets per second. It is a crowded busy place.
One way to get your tweets noticed and possibly retweeted is to play with the formatting. Space out your tweets, experiment with capitalization and emojis. You may only have 280 characters but that doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with how you format those 280 characters!
9. Live tweet an event
Events, such as conferences or summits, usually have their own unique hashtag and tweeting your experience is a great way to reach new accounts. You can also do this for virtual events, like webinars. Sharing your takeaways, aha moments, and lessons learned.
Combine this tip with Tip #7 and include a selfie of yourself or an image from the event itself. Don’t forget to tag the event host in the tweet to try to get a retweet and some engagement!
10. Test your tweets
Finally, experiment with everything. Test your tweets to see what formatting, visuals, phrases, or content work best. Twitter analytics will show you the impressions and engagement on every single one of your tweets. Pay attention to which tweets have the most engagement and highest impressions.
Or if you’re an Edgar user, you can use our variations tools to split test your tweets. Edgar’s history tab will show you which variation received the most link clicks.
There you have it, our best tips for growing your Twitter followers and increasing the overall engagement of your Twitter page.
Looking for more social media tips to grow your audience and increase your engagement? Take our free course, Social Brilliant to learn a foolproof social media strategy. Access Social Brilliant for free here.
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