Twitter: Increasing Followers’ Count vs Building a Community

twitterfollow

Rakesh Ojha asked this Twitter question on LinkedIn Answers recently:

How to Increase Twitter followers?

Which of the two is a good strategy to increase Twitter followers for business purpose and not play number game?
1) Follow large number of members who will follow you in return to increase your followers.
2) Tweet interesting topics, value insights so that others automatically follow you.
I understand initially you need to follow people to allow for others to follow you but in the long run which strategy you will adopt to increase your followers. I mean real followers who can actually be beneficial to your business later on or you can benefit from them.
Will you follow twit(s) (Somebody who uses twitter) who will never follow you?

A fair number of people on LinkedIn mentioned ‘Buy your Twitter followers on eBay’ and I totally agree with that. It is fairly easy to increase your followers count if you are really keen on doing that and there are published methodologies on how to go about doing it. An example, certain keywords that you tweet on will somehow automatically get you followers, for instance, ‘social media’, ‘holidays’ and the very popular ‘sex’.

Personally, I do not really care about my followers’ count on Twitter. A third are probably bots and another third are friends who were wondering ‘what’s this Twitter hype’ and have since left the conversation. I do have to admit a fair number are probably still lurking and mostly reading. They are the quiet audience.

Building a Community on Twitter

Here’s my published answer on LinkedIn Answers (with some edits):

I will answer this objectively. Perhaps you would like to look at it from a different perspective. I personally do not believe in ‘follow to get followed’ or ‘tweeting interesting topics to get followed’ etc.

My suggestions on how to ‘increase your Twitter followers’ count’ organically:

1. Build a community.
An interconnected community that chats and exchange ideas and knowledge on Twitter. It takes a while but once you get there, you will realise that people who were once strangers to you already knew each other and will now know you. The richness of Twitter is in the living community. Not in followers’ count.

2. It is not about who is following you, but who you follow – Scobleizer
Robert Scoble: “I don’t define myself by who follows me, but I define myself by who I follow! I follow smart people who teach me things and put interesting stuff in my view”

3. Interact with community.
You may follow thousands of folks on Twitter but if you do nothing to interact with all of them, they will do nothing to interact with you. Followers’ size do not matter and, remember, there are many bots on Twitter.

4. Your best followers are those who interact with you. Value them.
Here’s my observation, your best followers will be those who has sub-30-50 people on their Follow list.

  • They are not Twitter superstars. If someone famous, with millions of followers, retweets you, that is as good as striking a lottery.
  • They are the ones who will notice your tweets more (because their own Twitter timelines are less obscured by random musings).
  • They are the ones who use Twitter as it should be: interacting, chatting, (most importantly) sharing and they are THE MOST LIKELY to retweet you.

5. Be appreciative.
Something I find sorely lacking in Twitter etiquette, even among the power users. All it takes is a simple personal ‘Thank you’ if someone replies to a question you asked or helped in retweeting your question or a funny tweet you made. Nothing beats that personal appreciative touch to build a valuable listening community.

So, above all, build a Twitter community, not your followers’ count.

I don’t think I have covered all there is about building a valuable interactive community on Twitter. If you have any suggestions or would like to share your own personal experience on cultivating your on Twitter community, I hope you will kindly do so by leaving a comment below. Keep on tweeting!

Be Sociable, Share!

Category: Social Media | Tags: , , , , , , , , Comment »

↑ Back to top