As my lovely colleague Tracy pointed out at the beginning of her blogpost Why Twitter is Fab for Charities Twitter has 200 million active users and sees up to around 175 million tweets per day. Getting a piece of that pie should be easy, right? I mean, 0.001% will do, a cheeky 2,000 followers would be lovely, thank you very much! Yet 22,200 people search for the exact term “how to get more followers on Twitter” each month around the World. This post tells you not only how to get more Twitter followers for free but also how to build a quality Twitter following that will add value to your business.
Build it and they will come?
Unfortunately not. Users do not instinctively search for brands on social networks, particularly if your business is B2B. In fact if a customer does seek you out on social media it is usually to complain about you. But, people who know your brand are going to be far more likely to follow you on Twitter than trying to generate followers who have never heard of you. So, here are some elementary ways that businesses get more followers on their Twitter accounts:
Get more Twitter followers for free!!
Why would you pay for followers?? Firstly, you must have heard of quality over quantity, don’t pay for hundreds of Twitter followers when all the fake accounts will probably get deleted in a few months anyway and you’ll see your followers plummet again! Plus what value do those paid-for followers add to your Twitter account and more importantly your business? They aren’t going to buy your products or services, so what is the point?
9,900 people search for the exact term “get more Twitter followers free” each month around the World. Clearly people want more Twitter followers and for whatever reason, they are not willing to pay for them! Here are some ways to get more Twitter followers for free for your business profile:
Promote it on Your Website
This is a no-brainer, right? Yet not everyone does it. Some businesses are limited by their website’s functionality, some are worried about website visitors seeing their low follower numbers(!!)
You should definitely, 100%, no question, be promoting your Twitter profile on your website.
You want to promote your Twitter profile on well trafficked pages on your site, see the 30-10-10 rule below, in order to attract people who are not looking for it. This is the main way that you can use your website to gain Twitter followers for free. The other way is to make sure that you have links to your Twitter profile in the places where people will go when they are looking for it, usually in your website footer and Contact Us page. If you are not able to add the Twitter logo or an icon to your website do not let that stop you, it will not be as eye-catching but a simple hyper-text link can still make a difference, particularly in the places where users may be looking for your Twitter account information; website footer and Contact Us page.
The 30-10-10 Rule
If we go back to some of the key Community Management principles we can find some tools that will help us to plan how and where to promote your Twitter account on your website.
This rule says that for a well-placed link within a 30 day period, 10% who see the link will click on it and 10% of them will take a positive action (register/follow).
The points to note here are the importance of the placement of the link and that the percentages are based on the volume of visitors who see it. Through Google Analytics analysis you can determine:
- The page(s) which receives the most page views on your website
- The area of the page(s) which gets the most activity
Too often businesses only link to their social media profiles in their website footer or above the main navigation. A majority of users are unlikely to go to either of these places on their journey through your website. To draw visitors to your Twitter account you need to promote your Twitter profile where they are looking on your website.
Promote with Emails
This can come in two guises, email marketing and email signatures. If you have an email newsletter and/or do email marketing then you should definitely feature your Twitter account and invite people to follow it. Having a featured tweet or new follower of the month could help to entice people by showing them some activity on the account, rather than just another Twitter logo.
All employees’ email signatures should link to the business Twitter profile. This should be a text link as not all email servers display logos or images. It can be as simple as “Follow us @yourTwittername” under the phone number, or can say a little more with a reason to follow, for example “Follow @yourTwittername for the latest news on [your industry] and exciting new opportunities” at the bottom of all the other signature information.
Show up in Search Results
As well as being very beneficial for SEO and brand reputation it is important for getting more followers that your Twitter profile ranks in Google for your brand. That way, when someone is actively looking for your brand they find your Twitter profile too and may click through and follow you. To do this you need to make sure that your Twitter account name is your brand name.
Offline Promotion
Depending on the nature of your business you could also promote your Twitter profile on:
If you are driving people to follow you on Twitter, you need to have some activity on your account
It will do you more damage than good to promote your Twitter account to people and when they click through to follow you there are 3 tweets from over 8 months ago. Your promotion campaign MUST coincide with regular tweets from your account, about engaging topics people who know your brand will find interesting.
Engagement
Whilst Twitter engagement and campaigns could strictly still be considered a free way to get Twitter followers it does require resource committed to managing the campaigns. That resource naturally has a cost and I am therefore separating it from the free section.
Developing valuable social media marketing campaigns will help you to grow your Twitter following by attracting followers who may not have otherwise interacted with or been aware of your brand on Twitter. The nature of these campaigns can vary widely ranging from competitions, to Twinterviews, to the use of #hashtags, to regular Twitter debates/discussions, which is most suitable for your business will vary depending on the objectives of your Twitter account, your target audiences, your budget and other marketing activity. Contact us if you are interested in a social media strategy to get more Twitter followers for free.
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