How to get better at Twitter so people will actually follow you

Mistake #1: Not tweeting enough

Have you noticed how people with large followings tend to tweet a lot?

In the four years between when I created my account and when I started actively using it, I had tweeted and retweeted fewer than 200 times. But once I moved in with one of my best friends who’s a social media maven, everything changed.

Here’s why people who tweet more tend to have more followers:

If you’re a relative unknown like me, no one is going to search for our names. Most of my followers discover me if they see a retweet or a mention of me from someone they already follow.

Yes, it’s frustrating at first to have no engagement and when tweets feel like they’re hitting an echo chamber. But just keep plugging away and sharing great content.

The most important thing is to look active. I try to tweet at least once a day and sometimes even schedule tweets.

Mistake #2: Using your bio as a resume

I used to list everything about me. The schools I went to. Every place that had employed me. The fact that I was ‘M’ in D[M]V, a popular way for Washington, D.C., metropolitan area dwellers to show where they’re from.

Journalists, especially, have this habit of listing every place they’ve interned or worked, and frankly it’s great self-promotion. But there’s a place for that, and it’s called LinkedIn.

The average follower wants to know what they’re getting—that if you work for POLITICO, they’re going to expect tweets about politics. It likely won’t matter to them that you once had bylines in the Atlantic, Grantland, and a small-town newspaper.

The only caveat to this is if you’re actively looking for employment and you’ve worked at some prestigious places. Even so, you might as well drop the url to your LinkedIn anyways.

Mistake #3: Juggling separate professional and personal accounts

Building one Twitter is hard enough already, and eventually one will fall by the wayside. Trust me: I’m currently running six accounts between Twitter and Instagram, and they’re all garbage.

Sure, some of your high school and college friends will inevitably unfollow you, but that’s normal and okay. Someone who loves your content and retweets it religiously is more valuable than an inactive courtesy follow.

Plus, you can still use other social media to stay in touch.

Mistake #4: Curating a timeline with only links and retweets

There are three types of Twitter users.

Producers are the people who write, draw, and otherwise create content. An example is @jomnysun, who tweets his jokes.

Curators are those who find the best content online and distributes it. One example is actress Debra Messing, who has been sharing articles and tweets about the 2016 election.

Lurkers are the ones who consume a lot of content, but mostly like and occasionally retweet things.

I used to be the third option, but the sweet spot is a combination of a producer and a curator.

So what’s the deal on retweets, favorites, and quote tweets? As I briefly touched on earlier, retweets are more powerful and beneficial than favorites. Use retweets to enhance your feed if it’s content that is similar to what your audience is interested in.

Look at it from the consumer side: For example, my friends and I love Maryland sports, but we might not be interested in following every athletes’ accounts because their tweets will unnecessarily clog up our feeds. However, I can appreciate an account such as @TerpsWatch because they will highlight the best ones. Figure out what your value is and promote it.

Quote tweets are a bit trickier. You should always give credit when someone can say something better than you can. It’s just courtesy. There’s nothing more irritating than being quote-tweeted with “BRUH” or “Wow!”

So be a nice internet person by only quote-tweeting if you can add more value, context, or original thought.

A good example:

Mistake #5: #Overusing #hashtags

Unlike Instagram, where the hashtags are plentiful and welcome, Twitter’s use of them has evolved.

In Twitter’s more primitive days, hashtags would filter content and act as the best exploratory tool. Today, the platform’s trends section doesn’t require you even to use the hashtag to be discovered.

One caveat to this is if it’s a trending conversation — such as #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes, which went viral the day after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s wife appeared to plagiarize parts of Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech. When people are actively clicking through to the trends, it’s a good time to use it.

Other exceptions include if you’re attending an event and looking for similar tweets, or if you’re a brand that is promoting a specific hashtag:

Overuse of hashtags, in general, have become cumbersome and unnecessary. Only use them if they add context or can attract a greater number of eyes to your tweet. Better yet, spend those characters writing a better, more visually appealing tweet because people will share them.

This is one of the worst tweets I’ve ever written:

Mistake #6: Being offline when everyone else is online

The single best way to gain more followers is to live tweet events.

Tweets have an average shelf life of 18 minutes, which may have changed given Twitter’s new algorithm that highlights the best of tweets you missed. If people don’t see it within that allotted period of sending one out, they may never see it.

This means it’s advantageous to tweet when more people are online. Use live tweeting as a mechanism to gain more followers—that is, be online when people are watching the Super Bowl, presidential debates, the Oscars, etc.

And don’t live tweet in the sense of recapping what’s already on someone’s screen—hundreds of people already do that. Stand out by adding value, context, and humor to the situations happening on TV.

Mistake #7: Viewing Twitter as a one-channel medium

Remember how your parents taught you not to talk to strangers? Well, it’s sometimes okay to talk to them on Twitter.

Watch out for the trolls, but otherwise engaging with people sometimes help you make a new friend, gain a follower, or improve how much your followers like you and how willing they are to engage with your content.

Also, work with other accounts with similar number of followers to help build each others’ audiences. Though, it does help to have accounts with thousands of followers retweet you, too.

Mistake #8: Being clueless about audiences

This is tied to the idea that you should find out what your brand’s value is. One way of doing this is going to analytics.twitter.com. There, you can find who your audience is (age, demographics, gender, etc.) and what they’re interested in.

What’s unique about my account is that almost 70% of my audience is male and a majority of them like comedy, politics, and sports. As a result my tweets about local news might not land as well as, for example, this one:

Mistake #9: Not keeping up with memes and jokes

Harambe tweets were great over the summer. Warriors giving up a 3–1 lead was funny in September. Now the internet is onto the lovely Ken Bone.

Look, even the “holy goddam New York Times” reporters are being silly online, too:

Mistake #10: Worrying too much about getting in trouble, or not getting that job

Twitter is a completely different animal from just about any other social media platforms that are comparatively more private. Be funny. Be yourself*.

*Just as long as it is not a racist, sexist, tasteless, and otherwise problematic self.

The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi summarizes everyone’s biggest fears about the internet best:

If you’re afraid of how your joke comes across, it’s good to test out your tweet via a private text to a friend first.