6 Surprisingly Simple Tricks to Double Twitter Followers in 2 Months

Two months ago I decided to start using Twitter to get more people reading my blog. I found that marketing my blog posts on my Twitter account (@vginsburg) definitely increases readership, so I needed to figure out how to optimize my Twitter account to drive more readers to my blog. As with a lot of social media marketing, the first thing to do is to focus on a specific goal. 

I made a goal to get from about 230 followers to 500 as soon as possible. I know that doesn't make me a Twitter superstar, but it is more than doubling my followers in less than two months. Also, I have noticed that a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners hover around the 200 follower range and then give up on Twitter, so I wanted to write about this now, before I get to my next goal of 1,000.

I'm not a fan of digital marketing tricks like buying followers because I don't think they bring true value to my marketing mix. I want real people who actually care about what I'm writing about. So I committed to doing it myself, with no special tricks. The only tools I use are Hootsuite to schedule Tweets and, more recently, JustUnfollow to balance my followers/following ratio.

1. Follow people who Tweet. Twitter is a sharing platform, so unless you are a "Twitter Superstar" who can afford not to follow a lot of people, you need to find people who you want to follow. My suggestion is that you find people who are posting interesting Tweets that you want to retweet, as this will (ahem!) kill two birds with one stone. Also, as people start following you, you should follow them back ... but see No. 6 below for info about unfollowing, also. I add 5-10 new people per week, plus almost everyone who follows me.

2. Retweet other people's stuff. There are two reasons to retweet. First, it's a good way to be a part of the community. By sharing, you show that you aren't just there to toot your own horn, but you actually care about other people's stuff, too. Second, Tweets have a 15-20 second lifespan. That means that you need a lot of content to Tweet. For me, I use retweeting as a way to fill the gaps.

3. Use hashtags in your posts. Hashtags are a great way to participate in conversations. Use 1-3 hashtags in most of your posts to indicate the conversation to which your Tweet belongs. This will allow people who are browsing Twitter for information related to those conversations to find you and hopefully follow you.

4. Post multiple times per day, every day. Did you see the fact that Tweets have a 15-20 second lifespan? That  means that you need to Tweet a lot to get seen. I don't like blasting people - I see some people Tweeting every 5 seconds or so. Since I really don't like that approach, I schedule (using Hootsuite) 4 posts per day and then jump on Twitter 2-4 times per day to retweet. This means I get about 8 total posts per day, which is enough for me right now.

5. Use quotes to fill gaps. Just like retweeting other people's stuff, quotes are a way to make your Twitter feed not all about you. Also, people really like quotes on Twitter. Typically, one of my four daily scheduled posts is a quote, and I find that up to 50% of my retweets are quotes.

6. Unfollow people selectively. As you follow this strategy, you will end up following more people than you have followers. I like to keep a balance - there are some people who I follow for their tweets - including Inc., Entrepreneur and Harvard Business Review. They don't follow me back, but I still get value from their tweets. On the other hand, there are some people who I follow who I discover I either don't like their tweets or they never tweet. I unfollow these people to keep my total ratio of following/followed within a reasonable range. I downloaded an app called JustUnfollow to help me keep track of this.

Those are the six tricks I used to more than double my Twitter following in less than 2 months. Try them yourself and let me know how it works. Here's an idea: start by following me @vginsburg!