Truth be told, there is no free methodology, with a 100% guarantee, for increasing Twitter followers.
We have spent years looking for the secret formula to increase Twitter followers. While several articles recommend a number of ways to increase your Twitter followers, we found that none of these recommendations will definitively guarantee you the consistent growth you require.
This article sets out eight ways you can increase your Twitter followers. Please note some of these ways might be unrealistic for you to follow, but they are what people are actually doing to increase their Twitter followers.
The 8 ways you can increase your Twitter followers are:
Become popular outside social media
Become vain
Focus on a niche
Use the follow back strategy
Use paid Twitter ads
Use Influencers
Use a Twitter Growth Service
Using a Social Media Marketing Agency
Become popular outside social media
There are those who have achieved fame outside social media and most of them are celebrities. These people increase their Twitter followers without any effort and without posting content regularly.
Usually it starts like this - You watch a musical, movie or read an article about someone. You then Google that person and their social media handles show up in the first page of the Google search results. Out of the desire to know what the person does in real life, you scour through their social media accounts or stalk them online. Finally, you end up following them on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
For this approach to work for you, you have to make noise outside social media to attract enough attention for people to write SEO articles about you, or interview you on TV/Podcast.
Unless you are some kind of celebrity or popular person, then you need to put in the work required to grow your Twitter following. The alternative is for you to pay a bunch of media companies to write multiple articles about you, or interview you. This will cost you a lot of money and still doesn't guarantee you'll become popular enough for people to want to follow you on Twitter or any social media account. Best hire a PR company if this is the route you want to follow.
For the record, we write articles about Entrepreneurs, and our articles usually rank on the first page of Google search results about these Entrepreneurs. So you can contact us if you need help with this. Just drop us an email at magazine@thebusinessanecdote.com
Become Vain
Please don't bite our head off, but vanity increases Twitter followers like a fire lighting a candle. In short, vanity increases and sustains social media followers on most social media platforms including LinkedIn.
What do we mean by be vain? Well there are certain types of people that love showing off. For example they love showing off:
how beautiful they are;
how handsome they look;
how muscular they've become;
how big their buttocks is;
how much money they have;
how many expensive cars they own;
how great they look in a dress or suit;
how much weight they can lift;
how much weight they have lost;
how great their six packs are;
how lovely their house is;
how great they are at cooking;
their latest girl friend or boyfriend.
Now, if you love showing off and you are comfortable with that level of exposure, then being vain is a strategy that might work for you. Now there is nothing wrong with being vain, but we would advise against using this strategy because you might not be able to sustain it. If people only want to follow you on Twitter because you are handsome or look hot, then what does that say about your followers? When you get older or broke, will your Twitter followers still remain loyal 🤣. Highly unlikely, but give it a go if this strategy floats your boat. To be honest, everyone has a little vanity in them.
Focus on a niche
Trust me, this is easier said than done. For example, if your niche is fast cars, then it really isn't a niche because there are thousands of people posting content about fast cars on Twitter. The key questions you should ask yourself when identifying your niche are:
What makes you stand out from the crowd;
What makes your content unique.
If you get your niche right, your Twitter followers will increase. A great example of this is the Twitter account of sports influencer Rachel Ankomah. Her niche is not just Rugby, it is female Rugby in Ghana/Africa. She increased her Twitter followers based on this niche by providing content about Rugby in Africa. She also established herself as an expert in this niche by owning a Rugby League club in Ghana, and being a former Rugby player.
In a summary, identify your niche, make sure it is unique and establish yourself as an authority in that niche. If you don't, Twitter users won't have confidence in your content, and they won't follow you. Unfortunately, creating a niche from something that is very popular is extremely difficult, otherwise everyone would be doing it.
Use the follow back strategy
This is a desperate and not advisable strategy, but it does work sometimes. Basically, you state on your profile that if anyone follows you, you would follow them back. This strategy will not work for a company account because it could damage their reputation. On the other hand, if you are trying to increase your Twitter followers for a personal account then the follow back strategy might work.
It should be noted that this strategy can be deployed silently. You don't have to state on your profile that if people follow you, you would follow them back. Instead you actively follow other Twitter accounts and engage with their content, hoping they will follow you back. The problem with the silent approach to using this strategy is that some people might not follow you back. This leads to people undertaking an unfollow frenzy for those that don't follow them back.
Worst case scenario, you could end up with a higher ratio of Twitter accounts you follow, when compared to those following you. Remember it is pretty easy to identify an account that has successfully utilised the follow back strategy. Their number of followers are usually closely equal to the number of people they follow.
Use paid Twitter ads
Put simply paid Twitter ads can increase your Twitter followers, but at a premium cost. Here are some stats to help you decide if this is the right strategy to grow your Twitter followers:
According to Twitter, people spend 26% longer viewing Ads on their platform.
Twitter claims to have experienced a 35% year-over-year increase in global Ad engagement.
Twitter is Ranked as the 15th most popular Social Network - Yep, only 15th place behind the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
Only 10% of Twitter users are responsible for 92% of Tweets - There isn't a lot of engagement on Twitter as 90% of Twitter users are responsible for 8% of tweets on the platform. Let's do the maths. Twitter has 396.5 million users globally and 92 % of tweets on Twitter comes from only 40 million users. While the remaining 8% of tweets come from 357 million users.
As of 2020, U.S adults on Twitter spend an average of 6 minutes per day on the platform. UK adults spend roughly 4 minutes per day.
25-34 years old are the most popular age on Twitter globally.
Twitter is mostly male dominated - About 70.4% of Twitter's global users base is made up of men.
Use Influencers
Just like using Twitter ads, this is another straightforward way to increase your Twitter followers but at a premium cost. There are hundreds of thousands of Influencers on Twitter. These Influencers usually have hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions of followers. Most of these Influencers have a niche area. If you need to hire an Influencer to increase your Twitter followers, make sure their follower base aligns to yours. There is no sense in hiring a fashion influencer when you are targeting Twitter followers with an interest in rockets.
A key thing to remember when looking for an Influencer is not to focus on the number of followers they have. Instead, go through their tweets and get a feel of how their followers engage with their tweets.
For example Forbes had 18.6 million followers on Twitter at the time of writing this article. Yet both tweets in the screenshot below were seen by a total of 20,000 people, and only 44 of them engaged with these tweets. If you add the retweets, that would be a total of 58 engagements across both tweets.
What does this tell us?
The number of followers you have isn't a measure of the engagement your followers have with your tweets.
So what would a good Influencers' Twitter account look like? The simple answer is "High Engagement". For example, take a look at Cristiano Ronaldo's Tweet below, promoting the LiveScore app. Cristiano has roughly 106 million followers and this tweet had more than 88,000 engagements from his followers. Additionally, his tweets was seen by 1.1 million Twitter users.
In a summary, if you are willing to spend the money and you identify the right Influencer, you can easily increase your Twitter followers. If you're cash strapped then you could hire Microinfluencers, who have a small number of followers that are highly engaged.
Use a Twitter Growth Service
If you only care about the number of followers you have, and not how engaged they are, then this might be the perfect strategy for you. We are totally against this approach because it doesn't make sense long term. Twiends is currently the only platform that offers a genuine service for growing your Twitter followers. They market your account to other Twitter users registered with them, and in return you have to buy credits to fund this marketing activity.
Do we recommend them? No. We used them before, and for a time we increased our Twitter followers. The moment we stopped using them, our followers started unfollowing us. The ones that haven't unfollowed us don't engage with our content. While Twiend is not a scam, their business model is flawed and only focuses on increasing the quantity of Twitter followers you have, not the quality of them.
Every other growth service for Twitter followers is a scam. They ask you for your Twitter login details and tell you they will manage your account. What they mean by this is they will start following multiple people on Twitter, on your behalf, with the hope they will follow you back. This is basically the Follow back strategy we described earlier. The key difference is that you are paying for this service, and will most likely end up following more people than those that follow you.
Using a Social Media Marketing Agency
Procuring the services of a social media marketing firm is a great option to explore, if you want to increase your Twitter Followers. It is costly but it gets you results. These marketing firms analyse and identify the audience you need to target for growth. This includes identifying trending hashtags and creating visually stimulating content that increases your Twitter followers. They also write blogs and articles that are shared as content on Twitter and other social media platforms.
The downside of marketing agencies is that they are costly as previously stated. Additionally, when you stop using them you will notice a drop in the number of people that engage with your tweets. So, if you have got the money and no time to manage your Twitter account, then a marketing agency might just be what you need. An example of a marketing agency would be Yap Media.
Other ways to increase your Twitter followers
Post content consistently on Twitter
Twitter's algorithm is said to give Twitter accounts more visibility if you post content regularly. At a minimum, it is recommended that you tweet 15 times a day (omg). But some Twitter accounts tweet up to 51 times a day. Pretty sure that person doesn't have anything else to do. That said, there are platforms that allow schedule tweets all throughout the day. To be clear, there are people who tweet constantly but still don't see any increase in their Twitter followers.
Engage with content on Twitter
It is unclear how this will ever help you increase your Twitter followers, but it definitely increases exposure and engagement. A reply to another person's tweet could get you a lot of likes, but that doesn't mean the people that liked your tweet would follow you. For example, we tweeted about the Issue #13 of our magazine and it received 1024 likes. Yet our follower numbers didn't increase, instead they dropped. We found that the traffic to this tweet was only generated because of the hashtag #CEEK.
Conclusion
Let's be clear, increasing your Twitter followers is a full time job if you really mean business. No one will follow you if your content isn't awesome, and someone has to create this content. To sustain your existing followers you need to consistently post content on Twitter. Do not fall into the trap of buying Twitter followers. It is a scam and what they sell you are bots that will never engage with any content you post on Twitter.
If you don't have time to manage your Twitter account or tweet at least 15 times a day, then you need to hire someone who will, or you will never increase your Twitter followers.
Remember the 8 ways to increase your Twitter followers:
Become popular outside social media
Become vain
Focus on a niche
Use the follow back strategy
Use paid Twitter ads
Use Influencers
Use a Twitter Growth Service
Using a Social Media Marketing Agency
