How to find new Followers on Twitter
Gaining new followers in Twitter is actually not that difficult. If this is surprising to you, then
you will definitely learn a lot from this. We will be take it one step at a time, to ensure you
have the basis first, then get your followers. And the right kind of followers too!
Ok, let's get on with it.
Laying the Groundwork
Before you can start getting new followers, I want to make sure your Twitter profile is in order.
Why? You might ask. This is your business card, your advertisement, your call to action.
Without this, people will not know what you are doing on Twitter, why they are following you,
or even if they should.
Your Profile Picture
When I search for people to follow, I look at a few key things. But the first thing we all notice
is the profile picture.
Is there one? Or just the standard Twitter Egg.
To me, Egg = I don't care.
After all, you have not spent the time to change your profile, so perhaps you are not serious
about Twitter. So if you still have the egg, change your profile picture now (or at least soon when you have finished reading this :>).
What sort of picture should you add? This depends on the purpose of your Twitter account of
course.
•
If it's personal – a picture of you (clear, reasonable resolution, flattering etc).
•
If it's business related – add your business/company logo. Don't have one? Try
whipping one up simply with your business name in a photo editing program or try
http://www.logomaker.com . If neither of these options works and you are a solo
business owner – add your personal picture of course!
Your Profile Bio
The profile picture is important, as it's like a first impression. But next in line is your profile
bio. Here you can tell the world what is important to you (or your business), what you do, are
interested in, enjoy, tweet about etc. This is where you sell yourself, and your worthiness as
someone to follow. This might sound a little inflated, after all what is following someone?
But remember the number of followers is limited (I will talk about this later) and your tweets
are filling up my Timeline. So if you are not into what I am into…..I should not follow you.
So what sort of things should you put (or not put) on a profile bio?
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What TO include in your bio:
-
What you tweet about
-
What you are interested in or about (businesses)
-
Keywords (this helps in Twitter search to find you or your business)
-
Company web address or email (if you want to be contacted say so too)
-
Personality – add a little pizazz!. Be original.
What NOT to include:
-
Too much personal information (unless you are tweeting about your breakfast)
-
A quote from your favorite star, author etc - what does that really tell me?
-
Too many words (you only have 160 characters)
-
Too little – use the space provided to maximum effect
Profile Header Image
A more recent addition to the Twitter profile is the header image. This goes behind your
profile image, and your twitter information is displayed on top of this (name, twitter name, bio
etc) when you are looking at a person's Twitter page.
The header image can be used further to add to your "public image". What sort of image
should you choose?
•
First, here are Twitter's recommendations on image size and quality
o
image size: 1252 pixels wide by 626 pixels high
o
must be larger than 700 pixels wide for image quality
o
File must be under 5MB
•
As a business – showcase your products, employees etc
•
As an individual – choose an image fitting to your personality and tweets
BE CAREFUL
Your Twitter information is displayed on top of this header image, below your profile pic, in
WHITE!!
Twitter will darken the lower part of your header image, BUT make sure it is not too light at
the bottom or your text can't be read. So view your own profile to check when you are done.
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Background Image
Twitter also allows you to customize your background image, which is displayed behind
everything else in your Twitter profile. The end effect is, that you can display something
(information etc) on the sides of your profile. It is difficult to do this well because anyone
reading your profile can be using – a PC (small, medium, wide screen) or a laptop or a
mobile device. You can't and won't know. So if you are going to add such info on the
background check it on a few devices and reduce your browser size to see how it looks.
I won't go into this in detail, but if you want to use this extra real estate to further your brand
or display some information, here are some tips from the experts.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-create-a-custom-twitter-background-design/
Now let's move onto the exciting stuff – gaining new followers. Please turn the page :>
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Gaining new Followers
I thought I would start with a nice quote from a great thinker.
"He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader."
Aristotle
This is quite a fitting quote because: Twitter is all about followers and following.
In fact, so much so that the two are actually quite tightly linked. And this is one of the ways
you can gain followers - by using Twitter etiquette.
What do I mean by that?
Most people followed, will follow you back.
This is not always the case in Google+, Facebook and other social platforms in my
experience. The etiquette is not as well established there. But, the rate people follow-back on
Twitter, depends on who you follow and how attractive you are as someone to follow (profile,
tweets, number of followers etc).
Finding people to follow
Let's look at a few ways to find some followers. They are out there! Millions of them. We just
have to find them.
Twitter
Before we run off and use all those crazy Twitter tools (you might have heard of some) on the
internet to find followers, let's stick with Twitter. It's a great place to start. You probably
already have it open!
Friends
If you have not done so already, you might want to connect with your friends on Twitter. At
least the ones who will find your tweets relevant, if they are business related.
There are two main ways to find your friends:1. Via your email account address book
The following is a step by step guide to finding your friends on twitter via your online email
account (gmail, yahoo, etc)
1. Click the #Discover tab at the top of Twitter.
2. Click Find People from the left menu.
3. Choose Search Contacts from the list of mail provider (depending on what email
accounts you have of course!!).
4. Log into your email account by entering your email address and password.
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5. Select Find Friends. The wizard will search through your contact book and list
anyone on Twitter who is also in your contact book.
If a more visual approach is your cup of tea, take a look at the following picture of my
Twitter account which shows this section for you.
2. Via Search
A second way is to search by name or Twitter name directly. This is done in the field below
the email accounts mentioned in option 1 above. You will see Search Twitter for People.
Enter your friend's name or Twitter name (if you know it) and search to your heart's content.
Finally, if your friend is not on Twitter and you think they will enjoy it, you can invite them via
the last field Invite friends via email.
Keyword Search
Twitter search can be used in various ways to find new people to follow on Twitter.
For example we can find people who have tweeted on a specific topic or have it in their
profile, by searching for that keyword.
Just type a keyword you are interested in into the Search field at the top of the page in
Twitter – see what happens!! A whole bunch of new Twitter buddies could be waiting for you.
Who To Follow
On the left hand side of Twitter you will see a panel called "Who To Follow" which are
recommendations from Twitter based on their algorithms. Usually they are quite popular
people with lots of followers in your niche, but it can also be less famous people like us.
There is also the option to see all the people Twitter has found for us via the View All link at
the top of this section. You can also click refresh to get some different recommendations.
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Trends
Twitter provides a list of Trends which they think are relevant to you. You will see this on the
left below Who to follow. These trends come in the form of a list of keywords and hashtags.
You might like to use these to perform a search and find some more people to follow –
people who are participating in the current trends on Twitter. Click on some of these links and
see who is participating in these Trends.
Retweets & Favourites
People who retweet or favourite your tweets are usually already your followers, but
sometimes you will notice a retweet or favourite from someone you don't know. The fact that
they have taken the time to react to something you tweeted, means they like what they see.
So take a look at their profile and see if you want to follow them. (If they have a nice profile
like we talked about earlier – this should be easy to see).
Lists
People often make lists of their followers to make it easier to see through the fog of tweets.
By finding interesting people and seeing what lists they have you can find some great people
to follow. Not everyone leaves their lists public, but most do.
Within Twitter you can open a person's profile and start digging into their lists! Grab a spade
and take a look. The following screen shot shows you an example of such a profile and
where to find the lists.
Timeline & Followers
Sometimes the simple techniques work best. For example, you could also just take a look at
the tweets from the people you follow. See who is posting interesting stuff on their timeline.
Simply click on their profiles and see if you want to follow them too. I have found many a new
Tweeter in this way! There are other ways of finding people's followers, but we will get into
that latter with Tweepi.
Twitter Directories
Twitter directories can be a great help because they list thousands of interesting people. By
taking a look at the different directories we can find a whole swath of people to follow. Of
course anyone in a list of top followers is going to be pretty popular and might not notice you,
but some of the other directories may prove more useful.
Here are a quick list of the top Twitter directories:•
Twitaholic – lists top people by number of followers
•
Twellow.- by category
•
TweetFind –by category
•
TwitterLocal – by location
•
Twellowhood – by location
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Twitter Tools
Once you have exhausted Twitter and the above directories, the next step to take is to use
some of the popular Twitter tools. There are far too many to choose from, but the one I have
had the most success with is Tweepi.
Tweepi
Tweepi has a range of functions ranging from checking who is not following you back to
finding people new people to follow. The first feature we will be focusing on is finding new
followers.
If you want to learn about Tweepi in depth, check out this squidoo article. It shows you how to
use all the functions, tweak some settings and so on.
Followers of a Specific Person
This is a great way to find people to follow in a focused way. I use blogs that I read on
specific topics and then find the author's Twitter name. From there, you use the Tweepi
function Follow followers. You will find this in the Follow new tweeps section (shown
below).
Tweepi – Follow new tweeps section
Click on this button, and you will be taken to a new page with an input field where you enter
the full Twitter name of the person who's followers you want to find. For example my twitter
name is @madlemmingz. (the field shows you an example text – just start typing there.).
Now click Start Following.
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Tweepi – Follow Followers Page
Tweepi will now give you a large list/table of people who are following this person. These are
obviously people who find this person interesting and like what they say. Hence, you will
probably like these people worth following too!.
The table is not the most user friendly I have seen, but it provides all the information and
functionality you need. There are a few sections/columns we should take a specific look at so
you know how they work.
Tweepi Columns
First the icons on the left
Tweepi table – Follow Icons
Let's go through them in order.
•
User image / profile – click on this to go to their Twitter profile
•
Follow Icon – this icon with the green plus follows this person
•
Lock Icon – locks the account so you won't unfollow them
•
***
•
Info Icon – click this for a popup with detailed info on the user
•
Email Icon – send a message to the user
For me the most important is to find out information about the person (either via their profile
or the info icon). Then you will want to add them with the follow icon. If you want to use the
other icons of course feel free!! I have not used them all yet.
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Some interesting columns that give us information to help decide if the person is worth
following are shown in the following image.
Tweepi table – Useful Columns
When you are choosing people to follow, you want to make sure you are not filling your
Twitter with inactive, or uninterested people. The columns above will help you find only the
interesting people:•
Bio – Gives you a quick idea of the person
•
Location – might be useful if you have a location specific interests
•
# followers – number of followers they have
•
#statuses – how many tweets they have made
•
Last tweet - how long ago their last tweet was (ie. Are they active)
•
Klout Score – A measure of their social influence
•
Follow Ratio – you want to be close to 100% (ie They do follow back)
•
Follow? – who is following who
If you don't have all these columns (they are usually not all there by default) then you can
add them via the column chooser at the top of the table as shown below.
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Tweepi Column Chooser
Last thing, don't forget to move through the pages of the table (at the bottom). Most people
have loads of followers :>
Following their Friends
There are other options in the Follow new tweeps section. The next one is Follow friends.
This options shows you who a certain twitter account is following. Again this could be
interesting to know for a specific person who's tweets or blog you follow. However, it is
probably not as targeted an audience as the "Followers of" option above. (Why? It might
include their friends, family, other associates etc).
Following People from Lists
Another option is to take a look at the lists of people (like we did in twitter, but you can use
the Tweepi table as a better overiew). As I mentioned before, people who follow a lot of
people often put them into lists to keep things organized. As such, you can check out their
lists and see which ones look interesting. Usually you can tell from the name of the list if it is
an interesting one to go through. So you can ignore the strangely named lists.
Manageflitter
This is another tool I will talk about more in the next section (Unfollowing people). I just
wanted to mention it because if you go PRO – ie. Pay a monthly fee, you get some of the
same kinds of options. The only difference is you can do bulk follows, which was recently
removed from Tweepi as it violates the Twitter terms of service. (I can't guarantee
Manageflitter won't remove it either – check before you pay).
The follow options you get if you pay include:If you find this information worthwhile, feel free to share it and encourange people to visit
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•
You don't follow back - people you have not followed back
•
Verified - people with verified Twitter accounts
•
Popular
•
Copy Followers – bulk follow someone's followers
•
Copy Following– bulk follow people someone is following
•
Follow by Username
•
Everyone following you
•
Ninja Mode
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Cleaning up who you Follow
Once you have the hang of getting new followers, it is important to also clean up who you are
following. Why? Well there are a number of reasons you might want to remove people:•
Inactive users (no tweets, never on Twitter)
•
Users who don't speak your language (yes it happens)
•
Users who's tweets you don't like, agree with or are not interested in
•
Twitter has a limit of 2000 – what?
The 2000 Limit
Let's go into a bit more detail on the Twitter limit, just so you understand it. Twitter has tried to
keep accounts from becoming spammy, and put a 2000 limit on who you follow. However,
as long as your followers are within 10% of your following when you reach that number – you
can continue. Good to know huh!!
** The exact number is 1819 followers to 2001 following to go over 2000.
Or another way to see it: for every 10 followers you should only follow 11 people.
Don't worry too much about the math. Just remember that as you follow more people, make
sure your followers also increases at a similar rate. This is a useful reminder anyway,
because you want to follow most people who follow you (and vice versa). It is just polite :>
And a lot of people will avoid following you if you don't seem to follow back!!
Beware when Unfollowing
Obviously the list of people you follow will not exactly match those who follow you. You might
be following Tweeters such as businesses, celebrities or other famous bloggers. They often
don't follow back. However, you probably don't want to remove them if you enjoy what they
tweet. So when you are unfollowing watch out for these accounts if you don't want to
delete/unfollow them!!
Tools to Unfollow
As with finding followers, there are a lot of tools out there to help you clean up your Twitter
account (aka Unfollow).
Manageflitter
Although Tweepi has some unfollow functionality, I find it easier to use Manageflitter. Not only
is it cleaner and easier to use, it shows how recently you followed the person so I don't
accidently remove people I recently followed (I like to give them a bit of time to notice my
follow and so should you). If you want to use the same tool for both, feel free to skip to the
next section where we look at Tweepi.
Once you have logged in (via your Twitter login probably) you will see on the left hand menu
– Not Following Back. These are people you have followed who are not following you back
(of course you knew that! It's obvious right :>).
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Manageflitter Menu – Not Following Back
As I said above, don't just remove the people you followed recently, you will want to sort the
list by so it shows the oldest at the top. These are people who have had a while to follow, and
have not.
Also be careful not to remove the "famous" people who have not followed you back (yet :>).
** To actually Unfollow, select the checkbox next to the Twitterer. Unlike Tweepi – They are
first placed in a list, one checkbox at a time. On the right you will see the total Unfollow
Selected, which is a link you click at the end when you want to Unfollow them all. Don't
forget to click this link (as I did) else you will have to do it all again. Below is an image of
what you will see.
Managefiltter – Don't forget to click the Unfollow Selected
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Pro Settings for Unfollow
These things can be ONLY be setup with the PRO account. That is to say, you need to hand
over the money!! If you want to do this, you should use the options to help with your Unfollow
activities (shown below - the locked icons are available for the PRO account).
Managefiltter – Unfollow options
What you want to do is use the following two settings to make sure you don't unfollow
anyone important:1. Exclude people you have followed in the past 7 days (I recommend giving people a
week to follow you back before removing them. The exact number is up to you)
2. Exclude people on your white list (you need to separately setup your whitelist)
Other Unfollow Choices
Not following back is the simplest way to remove people. But sometimes you might want to
see what kinds of people you are following and remove the ones that are not contributing to
your cause. For example, if they tweet in a foreign language, why are you following them? Or
perhaps they are a "collector" of followers, and not really tweeting anything of value (so not
on your White list).
The left hand menu on Manageflitter has a number of other options to handle these kinds of
situations.
•
Non-English – people registered with another language
•
High Ratio – people who have a lot of followers (but follow a lot less)
•
Quiet – people who don't tweet much
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•
Talkative – tweet a lot (perhaps too much – flooding your Timeline?)
•
Inactive – have not really been on Twitter lately
•
No Profile Image - Not serious about Twitter (like we discussed at the top)
•
Fake Following - Twitter accounts considered to be Spam!!
Although you will not need to use these options very often, it pays to clean up your account
once in a while. Who knows what kind of people you are following :>
Tweepi
Tweepi also offers some Unfollow functions that you might want to take a look at. I find the
Manageflitter tool a lot more clean and user-friendly, with more options, but it's always worth
exploring your options.
The following is a screenshot of the top section of Tweepi you will see, once you are logged
in
Tweepi Manage Section – options for Unfollow & Follow
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Flush
The first option to consider is flush. This shows you a table of users who are not following
you. Tweepi displays these users in the standard informative table they use. I find it has too
much information, but it is possible to clean it up as discussed earlier in the follow section.
Once you have clicked on Flush and have the table, you can Unfollow people by checking
the checkbox next to their profile and then use the Unfollow icon at the top of the table.
Tweepi – Check the users checkbox & Unfollow at the top
Or, you can use the unfollow icon next to each profile as shown below.
Tweepi – The Unfollow icon
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Summary
So now you are probably overloaded with information and dying to get out there and up your
follower count. It is not really that hard, but it does require a little work from you. Consistently
and constantly.
Just remember the following things and you will have more and more followers by the end of
the week:•
Check and improve your profile to attract more followers
•
Use various way to find more followers – Twitter fundamentals & Tools
•
Cleanup your Twitter account periodically – to stay within the right ratio and just to
make sure you are following worthwhile people.
A Final Word
This guide is meant as a way to assist you to find and get more followers using techniques I
have found useful and successful. I cannot guarantee your success, but I will be surprised if
it does not help you right away.
If you find this guide useful, feel free to pass it on to your friends and colleagues and let them
know where you got it – it's good karma!!
Thanks for reading, and please let me know how you go getting more followers. I would love
to hear from you. Maybe you can teach me a thing or too as well.
You can find my Social media details below. Follow me!!
Happy Tweeting!!
Ashley Faulkes
Zurich, Switzerland
Sunday, June 23rd 2013
Blog: MadLemmings.com
Twitter: @madlemmingz
If you find this information worthwhile, feel free to share it and encourange people to visit
MadLemmings.com and connect with Ashley Faulkes on Twitter: @madlemmingz