How to Grow Targeted Twitter Followers -Not Just Numbers

If you are just starting out on twitter, or have been using twitter for a while, you realize that getting more followers is every user's goal. Not just any follower but followers who are interested in what you have to offer. This goal can be hard to achieve especially if you are looking for followers who will like and retweet your posts. but with the following  tips you will be able to achieve this. this is the method i have used personally to get not so many but more targeted followers.

1. Follow Others

This is the first  step, but of course worth mentioning . If you don't have a huge following on your blog and you're a medium or small size business, simply growing twitter followers without reaching out and following others is extremely difficult. You need to reach out to others who are in your industry or part of your target market and start following them. If you're providing great content, chances are that they'll follow you back. To do this effectively you need to find the right people to follow-sure, simply following everyone who comes across your path works to a degree, but they won't be valuable followers and chances are your twitter ratio (followers to who you follow) will be badly skewed. That reflects poorly on your company image.

2. Using TweetAdder

Meet TweetAdder, my new favorite tool for finding users to follow.  TweetAdder is extremely powerful follow/unfollow/message automation, but one of the things it lets you do is search for people to follow generaly based on keywords. You can narrow search results based on their interest, location, what they're tweeting about, the description on their profile, and more. We used it to target marketing execs and CEOs in the DFW area. Once you discover those users, it is easy to reach out to them on twitter. Localized results seem to be the most valuable. It normaly comes at an initial fee, but the value is well worth it.

3. Webinars

Find and participate in webinars! Not only is it a valuable learning opportunity, but these participations usually have a corresponding hashtag for attendees to tweet about the event, either posting questions or sharing information to their followers. Grab those hashtags and start pumping out tweets during the event. This is where we really saw a jump in user interaction.

If you are providing social media services, find a webinar that talks about social media practices. Some people might be your competitors, but most of attendees will be prospects looking to increase their own knowledge. This will be a great time to reach out, retweet other users' posts, and share your own offers and content. It's easy to do, and it becomes more effective the more blog content and ebooks (top of funnel content!) you have to share.

4. Directories

Directories are a mixed bag, but they're well worth mentioning. Some are much more valuable than others. Like TweetAdder, this will eventually be a blog post on its own, but the concept of a twitter directory is the same as any other directory-users can find you, and you can find other users to follow, based on what your services are and what your twitter is about. Our favorites are WeFollow and Twellow, which you should add yourself to just for the passive follows even if you never interact with the sites again. Other directories, such as Twiends, can be used to hugely grow your followers, but often you'll just see a jump in numbers and not in interaction because those following will have no interest in your actual content. The droprate can also be extremely high. I would discourage using a cheap shortcut, but if pure growth without results is your interest, then it's worth exploring.

5. Keywords and Hashtags

We can't get you all the important tips without mentioning 'keywords'? Use good keywords! Once more: Use good keywords! If you're tweeting your keywords, even if you aren't using hashtags, your tweets will show up in searches. Studies suggest that the sweet spot with hashtags is two hashtags per tweet. One is good, but move to three and you'll see a big dropoff in interaction. Hashtags earn your tweets twice the amount of interaction as those without. (Speaking of, ask your followers to retweet you! It can make a huge difference.) The extra bonus about keywords and hashtags is that users who find your twitter this way are almost always quality followers. They'll engage more, and a higher amount could be potential leads.

6. Marketing Integration

Plaster your twitter account everywhere and on everything. Every piece of marketing material that goes out, always remember to add your twitter account. It should be in most important view on your website, it should be on your direct mail lists, it should be on your promotional items, it should be in your email marketing. Ask people to follow you and they will do it. It's really that simple. Just get your twitter account out to the world and the world will follow.