How to Gain Twitter Followers Quickly

So you recently joined Twitter, or you’ve been tweeting for a while but only a handful of people are following you, or maybe you have a healthy audience but want to expand it further. Whatever your reasons, in my experience, there is only one guaranteed way to boost your following quickly. If you’re thinking that strategy is firing off killer tweets every few hours and you’re already worrying about how to go viral, don’t fret. It’s far simpler than that.

But before you start the process, you will need to have the following in place:

A well-written Twitter bio that explains succinctly who you are and what you’re interested in (avoiding anything negative such as ‘I hate so-and-so’ or irrelevant info such as ‘Retweets are not endorsements’). If appropriate, you can use emojis to break up different statements and make it more eye-catching (and emojis can also be used in the name — not username, that’s different — you use for your account e.g. a telescope for an astronomer or pen for a novelist). If you have a website, make sure it’s listed. And choose an engaging profile photo. This doesn’t need to be your face. It could be something personal to you like a cute pet, something you’ve created (e.g. a book if you’re an author, like me) or anything else that is original and catches the eye. Finally, don’t forget the background that sits at the atop your Twitter page — less important than your profile pic but still an opportunity to project your image and/or showcase something you want the world to see.

With all that in place, you can start the process.

Firstly, identify your audience — or audiences; you may have several. For example, a comedy author and space/science fan like me has the following: readers, bloggers, writers, comedians, scientists, science-fiction fans and people interested in humour generally. For now, if you have more than one audience, select one.

Secondly, you will need a pinned tweet for this specific audience that will appeal to them and show them you are someone they should be following. This is your calling card — the first tweet that potential followers will see. (To pin a tweet, just click on the tweet in question, click the three vertical dots in the upper right and then select ‘Pin to profile’.)

Now comes the hard work. You start to FOLLOW people. Lots of people. And not just any people. The people within your specific audience. You can search Twitter for people using keywords e.g. “comedian” or “astrophysicist”. While the results will only be a fraction of who’s out there, you should be able to identify (or already know) the major Twitter players among this particular audience (I call them ‘whales’). Then you check their list of followers and start following anyone with an interesting bio and/or profile photo who fits your audience profile. Also follow anyone who has liked or retweeted you recently and whose bio is appealing. Another method is to check your timeline and see who is liking and retweeting recent tweets in this particular field and follow them — the advantage of this method is that they are all active users and may still be online (potentially meaning a quick follow-back). There are other, more complex, methods I will share in another article but these will do for now.

Once finished with all the audiences who would appreciate your pinned tweet (though see note below on follow limits), wait two or three days, as not everyone is online every day, and then move on to a different audience with a different pinned tweet (or even an updated bio and/or profile pic, if you think it would help).

The good news is that Twitter users can currently follow up to 5,000 people without worrying about how many people are following them (to go above that limit, you’ll need 5,000 followers). The bad news is there is a follow limit of 400 per day. Hit that and you will likely receive a 3-day follow ban within the next 24 hours. Also, don’t follow too quickly as there is a limit per minute (something like 20 follows) although you’ll be able to follow again very soon after. Just don’t be too aggressive, as Twitter frowns on such behaviour and you could ultimately end up losing your account.

Performing this process properly can be very time-consuming (I once spent 2.5 hours selecting my 400 potential followers). But, using this approach, I have recently hit about 25% follow back. Pretty good, when you consider many accounts are pretty inactive. That means I was able to increase followers by up to 100 a day. By just tweeting and not following, I wouldn’t expect that many new followers in a month — maybe even three months.

Of course, once you start gaining a big following, more people will start naturally following you without being targeted. You don’t need to become a whale — a small dolphin will do — but once you are one of the big fish (or mammals, in the case of whales and dolphins!) you will really notice the difference.

I really hope that helps you grow your following. If you enjoyed the article, you can help grow mine by following me at www.twitter.com/quitefunnyguy.