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Several Methods To Grow Your Social Media Following
Growing a large following is something many new social media users struggle with. They see all these big accounts with 20, 50 or even 100K followers and wonder how did they ever get there? Gaining followers for your social media and networking connections has its’ in and outs, depending on the network you’re dealing with.
Blog Interact will first give you some tips and tools on how to grow your Twitter following steadily and we’ll also make sure that you stay within the Twitter guidelines to avoid account suspension. There are certain practices that are not allowed and the last thing you want is to get your account suspended after you worked hard to get a decent following.
Quality or Quantity?
This is the first thing you have to ask yourself. Do you want a small number of followers where you can easily keep track of the timeline and interact with everybody or do you want to grow as big as possible and utilize Twitter lists to keep up with the tweets you care about?
If you have a Twitter account for personal use, the first option will probably work best for you. If you have any commercial aspirations and would like to promote your brand or business to the world market, your goal will be to reach as many potential clients as possible. Growing your Twitter following is an easy and low cost method to promote your business or brand worldwide.
Tools of the Trade
These are a few tools we use to manage our account. There are many more tools out there but today we will stick to the tools that work for us.
FriendorFollow
Simply enter your user name and it will show you who isn’t following back, who is a fan and mutual followings. If you connect with Twitter, it will also give you the option to follow or unfollow users.
Manageflitter
Similar to FriendorFollow but more advanced and it can filter your account for a variety of stats such as users without a profile image or users that are quiet or tweet a lot. There is a pro upgrade available but the basic mode has all the features an average user will need.
Socialoomph
When your account starts to grow exponentially it becomes hard to keep track of all your new followers. If you want to set up a welcome message for all your new followers, this is the tool to use. You can set up an auto DM and welcome new followers. DO NOT add a link to that message because that’s what everybody is doing and will only tick people off. Come up with something creative and original within the 140 character limit.
There are also features that will allow you to auto tweet status updates but that is NOT done as you should keep it real on Twitter, more about this at the end of this blog post.
Twiends
Fun and addictive would be the best way to describe this tool! You can actually use this to grow your stats on Twitter, Facebook, Website and YouTube. You can earn credits for connecting with other Twiends users and use those credits to let others connect with you. Sort of like a marketplace. You can even tweak your setting to get higher quality followers and there is an option to purchase credits if you don’t have the time to earn credits manually.
Twellow
If you want to find followers in a specific geographical area or category, this is the tool for you. It lets you search for users per city or from a directory of categories. This is great if you have a local business and you want to connect with all the Twitter users in your city for example. You can also follow and unfollow within this tool.
Now How Do I Get Followers?
All the above will help you to manage the new followers as your account starts to grow. Obtaining new followers can done in many ways.
* Follow users from follow back lists. Many users have created lists consisting of people that returned the follow so there is a good chance those users will follow you as well if you start to follow them.
* Just Google: “follow back list twitter”.
* Use the Twellow tool to find users in your niche or city and connect with them.
* Add Twitter links to your website, blog and email signature if you use one.
* Use the Twiends tool to get new followers.
As your new followers start to roll in it’s time to use the account management tools such as FriendorFollow and ManageFlitter. Find out who followed you back and who didn’t. You can also unfollow people that didn’t return the follow if you wish but DO NOT mass unfollow people or unfollow those who did return the follow. These are bad practices that could get your account suspended. We’re not celebrities that have 500K followers and only follow 10 users back. Your account should have a healthy follower ratio.
Remember that you can only follow 10% more than your follower count when you pass the 2000 follower mark. Example: 3000 followers will allow you to follow 3300 users.
Keeping It Real
This is what it’s all about. It’s alright to try and get a large following but don’t do any of the following:
* Don’t spam your product link over and over again.
* Don’t use auto tweet tools except for a meaningful auto DM perhaps.
* Don’t mass follow and unfollow since this could get your account suspended.
* Don’t unfollow those who return the follow just to make yourself look more popular.
If you stick to these guidelines and use the above tools you can easily grow your following to any size you want.
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Active Blog Interact® Members
Mikel Langston
Tue 29th Mar 2011 at 11:28 PM
Good read, informative. Thanks Bryan
Peppy
Sun 10th Apr 2011 at 7:46 AM
Hi Brian,
I liked your article’s helpful suggestions and listed sites/tools to implement while ‘growing’ followers – I continue to glean valuable information from Blog Interact.
I wanted to add a complement, Brian, in that I really appreciate the sincerity that comes across in what you are doing with Blog Interact. You seem to have found a way to harness the talents of “Blog Specialists” that convey an integrity in their articles… a professionalism that we expect in the “stone and mortar” world but has been missing, to various degrees, in cyberspace.
Even though my blog is not in the echelon of those here – I do consider it a privilege to be a part of this community. Keep up the great work!
Peppy
Bryan P. Hollis
Sun 10th Apr 2011 at 1:24 PM
Hi Peppy,
Thanks for the kind words. It does seem that I have been blessed with quality bloggers here. Don’t sell yourself short or think that yours is not of equal caliber. My own blogs don’t generate NEAR the following of most of those that participate here. Like anything, I suppose there is a learning process. I thought I knew everything I needed to know about starting this particular type of site. HA!!! You all have (and continue to) teach me everyday. I’m starting to babble. Anyhow, I hope you will continue to post here and enjoy the site,
Bryan
Karen
Sun 10th Apr 2011 at 4:38 PM
Hey there Bryan, nicely done, this is not only useful to new tweeters but also to those of us who have been tweeting for a while, I use several of the sites that you have mentioned, but most of my following count has been organic rather than anything else
Bryan P. Hollis
Mon 11th Apr 2011 at 12:29 AM
Hey Karen,
This was really written for those that want or (think) they need to grow their twitter following (mainly businesses). I don’t go the “paid” follower route either. This was really a tool for people in general. A service that I have paid for with respect to twitter was a “auto-responder” tool. I was getting so many followers to day after I tweeted that I was spending 1/2 a day to respond. I quit with it too.
Bryan
Tosin Adeoti
Sun 10th Apr 2011 at 10:42 PM
Hey Bryan,
Wow…these are awesome tools you’ve got here. Just seeing this article for the first time.
I’m bookmarking it.
Keep up the good work, Bryan!
Tosin
Bryan P. Hollis
Mon 11th Apr 2011 at 12:10 AM
Hey Tosin,
Thank you. This little list was put to shame by Brankica’s 50 ways to get traffic list! I thought I was on to something here. Thanks for reading,
Bryan
holiya
Mon 16th May 2011 at 5:55 PM
Check out Increasr.com, you can get credits there much faster, you can also get more twitter followers, facebook fans, youtube subscribers and video views. Check it at http://www.increasr.com
Kavita
Wed 18th May 2011 at 5:40 PM
Check out Increasr.com, you can get credits there much faster, you can also get more twitter followers, facebook fans, youtube subscribers and video views.
Mark
Thu 23rd Aug 2012 at 3:59 AM
Thank you just the information and tools i was looking for. I’m a twitter newb and was feeling somewhat lost as far as breaking out of my family/friends circle etc.
Twitter Followers
Tue 04th Sep 2012 at 5:17 AM
Nice post
Thanks for the information
Jenifer Kolb
Mon 17th Sep 2012 at 1:40 AM
Wow thank you for this particular informative post. You are a good article writer and describe everything as good.