7 Tips On Growing Your Twitter Account The Right Way

Learn the long-term game to grow your Twitter account

7 Tips On Growing Your Twitter Account The Right Way

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Get more opportunities and meet amazing people by improving your online presence.

You can be the best in any field if nobody knows about you. But, on the other hand, many average people get better opportunities just because they put themselves out there.

Thus, in this article, you will learn how to use Twitter to put yourself in a better position.

However, before going further, it's important to note that you need to put work in. This article shows you tips on building your audience for the long term. This is no get-rich-quick scheme.

1. Be yourself

"Be yourself" might sound like the most basic advice. However, a lot of people try to copy what others are doing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

Let's say you copy what other people are doing, and it works for you too. Would you be happy doing something just for the numbers if it's not fulfilling for you? Think about it.

There is a famous quote I like a lot from Oscar Wilde, which says the following:

Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.

Before concluding, I also want to mention that authenticity is a lost trait on social media. The more authentic you are, the more you will stand out from the crowd. Be yourself; you are unique. Do not give that up.

Actionable steps:

  1. Do not imitate others.
  2. It's fine to inspire from other people.
  3. Ultimately, be yourself. People love authenticity.

2. Pick a niche

The easiest way to pick a niche is to look at your strongest traits or your qualifications.

If you are a backend developer, you might want to talk about backend development. If you are a doctor who specialises in dermatology, you might want to focus on that. I believe that by this point, you get the gist.

By choosing a niche you know about, you will be able to provide quality content consistently. You will be less likely to struggle coming up with content ideas since you are working in that field. You face new challenges and opportunities to learn every day, which you can then transpose into Twitter content.

Also, you might become known as an expert in your niche since you have X amount of years in that field. People will recommend you to other people.

It's important to remember that when you choose a niche, you choose the tribe you want to attract. Post about everything and anything, and you will confuse people. As a result, you will struggle to grow. Focus on a specific niche, and watch your account grow.

Therefore, let's conclude with some actionable steps:

  1. Look at your qualifications or strongest traits.
  2. Pick a niche based on that.
  3. Stick to that niche.
  4. Become known as an expert on that niche.

3. Optimize your profile

There are three things people see when they click on your profile page:

  1. Your banner
  2. Your avatar
  3. The biography

Thus, you want to make the most of that space, so it makes people follow you. At the minimum, the banner and biography should let people know:

  • who you are
  • what you are tweeting about

Let's take one of the founders of FeedHive as an example. In the picture below, you can see Simon Høiberg's Twitter profile.

From the biography, you can see that he is a Software Engineer that builds SaaS application such as FeedHive in public.

Also, the banner specifies that Simon tweets about: entrepreneurship, SaaS and tech startup.

Thus, when you visit Simon's profile, you know who he is and what he tweets about. So if you are interested in those topics, you will follow Simon.

In contrast, think about an account that has a banner with birds and an empty bio. How do you know whether to follow that person? How do you know you are interested in that person's tweets or not? It's difficult to grow when your account does not have a clear mission.

As a result, let's close this section with the following actionable steps:

  • use the banner to describe what you tweet about
  • use the bio to specify who you are

By doing so, you will make it easier for people to press that "follow" button.

4. When and how to tweet

When you are just starting with Twitter, when and how to tweet is essential. It decides whether your great piece of content takes off or falls into the Twitter black hole.

To make sure as many people see your content as possible, try to tweet when most people following you are active.

To find when people following you are active, you can use a tool such as FeedHive. As you can see in the screenshot, the tool shows when your followers are most active.

Thus, you can increase your chances of getting your content seen by posting when your followers are most active.

Now, the next question is how to tweet? Even though you can see when your followers are the most active, you might not be available to publish content at that specific hour.

That's not an issue because you can use tweet scheduling tools such as FeedHive, which allows you to schedule tweets. The figure below shows an example from the FeedHive tool. You can prepare your content and then schedule it for later.

Thus, it is quite important when and how you tweet. The actionable steps of this section are as follows:

  1. Learn when your followers are more active.
  2. Tweet at those hours for a better engagement.
  3. Schedule your tweets for later.

5. Engagement > Followers

I do not see this mentioned often, but engagement matters more than followers. What does it matter if you have 1 million followers, but only ten people engage with you?

On the other hand, you can have 10,000 followers and a few hundred interactions daily. So what do you choose between the two?

A large number of followers or a good engagement rate?

I would always recommend focusing on engagement rather than the number of followers. You do not want people to simply see your tweets. You want people to engage and interact with you.

But how can you influence one or the other?

First of all, it's about the content you publish. Some content welcomes people to discussions, whereas others do not leave much for conversation. You can grow your engagement rate by posting thought-provoking, valuable and informative content.

Also, you can influence your engagement rate positively by interacting with people that engage with your content. Interacting with people shows that you make time to engage with others and that you value them.

Thus, the actionable steps for this section are:

Focus on engagement rather than the number of following.Engage with people that interact with your content.

6. Engage with big accounts

Engaging with other people is the most underutilised technique. Instead, people spend most of their time and energy pumping out content.

The harsh truth is that nobody sees that content in the beginning. It's like talking to yourself, and that can become demoralising quickly.

Thus, you need to re-assess your strategy. Instead of pumping content for nobody, find authoritative people in your niche and interact with them.

Why is engaging with big accounts a better strategy?

That's a good question, and I will answer it now! As you might have seen, famous people tend to get many replies to their tweets. That means the reply section on those accounts is the place where you can get seen!

When you reply to a big account's tweet, a lot of people see it. Even better if your reply gets a lot of engagement. Responses with the most engagement get placed at the top, which means even more visibility.

Besides that, you might catch the eye of big accounts if you continuously reply with helpful stuff. That means they might start engaging with your content and even follow you. That brings extra visibility to your content.

Be aware of what you reply. Self-promoting yourself might get you ignored/muted/blocker rather than helping you. Try to respond with helpful stuff and only self-promote if it makes sense. Your goal should be to add to the conversation and be useful. Self-promoting should come into second place and only when it makes sense.

Let's finish the section with some actionable steps:

Make a list of people with good engagement and many followers from your niche.Turn on the notifications for some (if you wish; if not, it's still fine).Try to be among the first people to reply.Bring something valuable to the discussion.Self-promote only when it makes sense. Try to avoid it, though.

7. Engage with your followers

Some people completely ignore the people that follow them after they get X amount of followers. Ignoring people that engage with you, it's a great strategy to push them away.

Of course, at some point, it will be almost impossible to interact with everyone. But that does not mean you should not interact with anyone.

Take time out of your day or week to step back and go through the replies. Then, interact with people that engage with you and show them you value them.

Actionable steps:

Go through your recent tweets.Find people to whom you did not respond.Engage with those people.

Conclusion

I want to close by repeating that growing on Twitter is a long-term game. Of course, some gimmicks and tricks can bring followers, but they are not worth it.

If you want to build something solid and lasting, follow the above pieces of advice. It might not be easy, but it is going to be worth it.

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Before closing off, let's see the tips one more time:

  • Be authentic. People appreciate authenticity, especially on social media.
  • Pick a niche where you can be an authority.
  • Optimise your profile. Your profile should make people follow you.
  • Find when your followers are most active and schedule tweets for those hours.
  • Remember that engagement is more important than followers.
  • Engage with large accounts and with people that interact with your content.
7 Tips On Growing Your Twitter Account The Right Way

Catalin Pit

Technical Writer

Software developer • Content Creator • Technical Writer.