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Twitter has been instrumental in helping me grow my business, get new clients and referrals, and meet other web designers and entrepreneurs – so I thought that this would be a pretty relevant subject to cover. Want to know the REAL secret to getting more Twitter followers? I’ll bet you do. Well I’m going to tell you, and I’m not even going to charge you a premium of $29.99 for my top secret 3 page ebook from a one page site that involves about an hour of scrolling, several price cuts (as long as you buy within the next 5 minutes and 34 seconds), and a set of free steak knives. No, this dear readers, is freemium information. *insert additional meaningless buzz words here*
The Tension Is Killing Me, What’s The Secret?
Well, with no further a-do or lengthy introduction, the “secret” is to follow people. You don’t need to be interactive, you don’t need to be some sort of super re-tweeter, you just need to follow people. Oh, and NOT with some spammy automated program that also retails for $29.99 with a free set of steak knives.
Allow me to demonstrate with a graph of my Twitter followers over the last week
That’s a pretty clear picture eh? – “oh but that’s only ONE example!” I hear you cry.
Ok I feel your pain, let’s zoom out and take a look at a monthly view of the scenario.
Starting to see a pattern emerge? You should be! You follow people, a (relatively high) percentage of them follow you back.
Super Important Disclaimer
Do I endorse abusing Twitter by following thousands of people for the sake of bollstering your own follower count? No. Am I saying that this will make you successful on Twitter? Again – absolutely not.
This is simply a method I’ve used to grow my Twitter network, not JUST my followers – and I didn’t wander round Twitter just clicking “follow” on any old person, what would be the point of that? No – I’m in to web design, so first I went on the profiles of other web designers who I talk to and started following some people that they were following. Why? Because I get on well with them on Twitter, it’s a fair assumption to make that they probably follow other people who I’d get on with.
For the big lot of 100 new people to follow yesterday I needed someone who was relatively high profile in the web design world, and who I also got on with well – so I grabbed 100 of the people who Chris Spooner is following.
I believe that this makes a big difference – if I was interested in cats, and all I tweeted about all day was cats, I’m pretty sure that none of the people who Chris is following would have bothered to follow me back. But because I’m in the same niche/industry (whatever) – I may be of interest to them.
Another thing to take note of is that this by no means a guide to keep followers, if you post useless stuff all day long, you can be sure that people will unfollow you again pretty quickly. It’s not a get rich quick scheme.
In closing – this strategy is open to abuse like ANY OTHER. I may have picked a huge link-bait title, but I want to grow my Twitter network, both in terms of following interesting people, and being followed – not to spam the hell out of everyone.
Enjoy – go out there and follow great people! Here’s a short list of my recommendations for people to follow
- Me
- Japh
- Spongeproject
- Devolved
- Aaronrussell
- ErisDS
- Rakuli
- TonyChester
- Papaverine
- Savagemic
- ChrisSpooner
- ChrisPowell
- Coqui2008
- ChlorineKid
- RobHawkes
- RyanRoberts
- Angstmann
- Calmbanana
- DuncanMacgregor
- PixelDeath
- Karinne
- LChad
- Deluzione
- JacobHaug
- WebDesignGirl
- Foamcow
- Rich97
Why Aren’t I On That List?
Because these are the people who reply to me pretty much every day and always have interesting things to say. If you’re following me and not listed here – talk to me more often!
* (I’m sure I’ve forgotten a couple of people who do deserve to be on that list, so please don’t be offended, send me a DM and I’ll add you)
Update:
Brett, who commented below, has very kindly emailed me to let me know that unofficial Twitter policy is that you shouldn’t add more than 200 followers a day. This seems very reasonable to me, and I certainly won’t ever come close to that – but it’s a handy bit of info nevertheless!
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Nice post John,
About a month ago when I was sitting next to my box of tissues, crying over the isolation of it all and wondering what Twitter was all about, it occurred to me that going out on a limb and following people that I was YET to interact with in person or online might be a good idea.
Suffice to say that once I started following people with whom I share common interests, like-minded twitters started following me back. I am about to go on another follow-hunt and hopefully expand my network as I agree that your method not only helps to increase followers it builds a network rich in resources and interesting people.
Twitter is absolutely useless if you treat it like an instant messenger and even more-so if you treat it like a blog. I have started to treat it like a hand shake and a witty icebreaker, helping to open up relationships that were previously impossible.
Oh yeah, and you’re encouraging spam, stop that! :D
You should check out my own stats; they’d be interesting. I don’t really follow new people unless they follow me first, and my number of followers jumped steeply in February and has been growing ever since! Freaky.
@rakuli – Totally agree about the witty icebreaker – it really is just a brilliant way of getting to know likeminded people. I think I’ve had at least 8 referrals from people on Twitter in the last month, and met some fantastic designers and developers who I’ve already learned a lot from!
@rachael – Probably because I linked to you from this blog in February :P – and yeah there’s definitely an element of “organic growth” but I’ve found that to taper off over time.
Great post John! I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. Anyone who knows me and has heard me mention Twitter but doesn’t get it themselves, gets similar advice from me. I keep hearing “How do I get started with Twitter? I don’t get it… Where’s the point? What’s the value?” My response has been: Get TweetDeck and then find at least 10 people in your industry / area of interest to follow. It’ll snowball from there.
Love it! And thanks heaps for the link-love ;)
Totally agree with everything you’ve said of course. It’s easy to get wrapped up in Twitter. Like Japh said, it’s snowball effect!
Thanks for the link love ;)
Nice to see a positive (and sustainable) article about growing your network, I see far too many being a purely number based exercise.
Friends of friends are almost always good follows … I just wish real life was as simple.
Thx for the link love :)
@John thanks for the mention! Great article by the way. The real secret is being mentioned I’m going to have to turn off email updates. :P
Very interesting post John. Somehow I’ve gathered a little over a thousand followers without doing anything really but now you’ve got me thinking…
Your idea makes sense but i also feel that if i follow all sorts of ppl ill never be able to keep up ppl i wouldnt be able to keep up with their tweets to possibly chime in or read anything interesting.. sure it would help me when i asked something it could help… It would be like a packed room with everyone yelling, nothing gets heard.
@eric-from-boston Sadly that is true. My original goal was to not follow more than 100 people; well that quickly flew past. It then became 200 people and I’m now at a little over 300 following now. There’s a great Twitter app called Tweetdeck that will help you cut down on the noise by letting you set up channels of people. It might be for the Mac only but it’s worth looking into, unless you already have it of course.
Tony
@john – Your post is true and working. You’ve sent a few new people my way and I’ve been following a few of them back. This stuff really works, who would’ve thunk it ;-)
Tony
P.S. I’ll stop spamming your comments here now.
@tony … Do you feel its worth it or not? Has it benefited you? I couldnt possibly be on twitter all day to keep up… I wouldnt get anything done
Great post. I need to get my tweet on.
@eric It is worth it to follow like minded people or people that supply useful info. You don’t need to follow everyone, some folks say you should but I’m not in that camp. Obviously I don’t see everything the 300 people I follow write, and yes, Twitter does take up a bit of your day but that can be controlled just as you control email. Set a few times a day to catch up.
Now if you have an iPhone with Tweetie on it, you’ll be stuck on Twitter no matter where you are.
@johnonolan – Following a lot of people is probably the most counterintuitive thing for many, but it works. A few months ago, I just autofollowed about 700 people out of my Outlook (using the yahoo address book import tool on Twitter). I got about 350 new followers in the next week. If you get a lot of tweets you don’t want from people, you can always unfollow them later and use the search feature to make sure you catch all the times people mention you.
Great story Mike, thanks for commenting. I completely agree – I don’t just follow people for the sake of it, I do try and connect with them and if no connection is happening then I’ll just unfollow them and find some other new people :)
…of course keeping track of that many people becomes a lesson in multi-tasking!
Or… we could just do something to get on your good side so you link to us (I have had over 20 new followers today alone since you mentioned me here).
Very glad to hear it Chris, a couple of other people have said the same thing so I’m really chuffed that it’s been useful to lot of different twitter’ers!
Great info John. Simple but spot on. I have six Twitter accounts each with almost 3,000 followers. My daily objective has always been to simply follow as many people as allowed by Twitter rules with a huge exception. I only follow people who are targeted to the niche of the account. I never follow people just for the sake of following. I also have my auto follow and auto unfollow in place. I instantly unfollow anyone who unfollows me which opens up more slots to follow more people while still staying within Twitter TOS.
Hi Brett, thanks for commenting – do you have a link to the Twitter terms of service which you’re talking about? I’d be interested to read them but can’t seem to find em in the main T’s and C’s.
I agree with you following people is the way to build an audience… Whatever strategy you use to find people of mutual interest is up to you! Directories like http://wefollow.com are pretty useful, as are some search apps, but it’s certainly possible to get followers pretty quickly this way: just look at my graph on http://twittercounter.com/Tony_Hayes – yes I am bragging a little but it proves the point…
This seems like a great idea to do, I think as long as you follow those in your area, that’s going to be a powerful list, especial if most of them follow you back :)
Nice article John, as usual :) Hopefully in the summer will have a lot more time to dedicate to the site, Twitter and everything else, roll on exams ;)
I found your page following some links from Twitter (don’t ask me to reproduce the path that got me here, though :-). I thought I’d add a comment here to highlight the fact that not all Twitter benefits are associated with a large list of followers.
Our small agency (@2wtx) has been getting followers that quickly “unfollow” us as soon as they see we are not going to reciprocate. The thing is, we are still being able to communicate with a larger audience, get relevant traffic to our website, and discover interesting sources of information and blogs like this one, simply by listening, looking around, contributing to the conversation, and following links that we like without necessarily adding people to our following list.
I guess different types of Twitter usage profiles are going to be identified in the future, none better or worse than the others, just different based on people’s and organizations’ needs.
Whoa… this site is pretty awesome :) your layout is really well designed, and your blogs are (judging from what i’ve read) very interesting. heehee… consider yourself favorited. :-P
Thing is a complete farce, I’ve been a VIP user all day, and I’ve had about 20 new followers from it… $10 wasted!
JohnONolan – Mon 22 Jun 16:33 via TweetDeck
Hypocrite tbfh
Steve, you’re absolutely right – it was hypocritical of me to do it, and I’ve learned my lesson. As I said in that tweet – $10 wasted. If I had any sense at all I’d have followed my own advice and not gone looking for totally un-targetted followers purely for the sake of numbers.
I certainly won’t be doing it again! Genuinely, thank you for pointing this out – you’re right and I shouldn’t be preaching something I’m not practicing, consider myself reprimanded :)
Well takes balls to come clean, consider yourself forgiven :)
I knew I liked you for a reason :p
This is a very good (and so obvious but not obviously obvious) point – not only does it get more people following you but essentially you find a whole ton of new great people to follow yourself!
Also, great post. Subscribed (and followed)!
I am way late on this post and I am sure that most of you have many more followers by now. I have nearly 30,000 followers and I find that what is important is the communication. The small tweets, like, I went to the store, aren’t necessary communication. They are fun to read and catch up on with some of the main followers but the @reply’s are key. With that many followers, even the ‘real’ communication is difficult some times. But, I think it all comes down to what you want our of twitter; business, networking, social, etc.
Thanks for the article.