Growing a Twitter Page 101

Over the past 2 weeks I’ve been happy to see my Twitter account grow from 80 followers to over 400 followers. These numbers might seem low but to see that growth organically in 2 weeks and with less than 250 tweets gives me a lot of hope for the future. These are the early stages of my move from full-time web design into a marketing and web design strategy focused career. I’ve had previous marketing jobs but was always working in environments that were very old-school and had no grasp of what a modern digital strategy really looked like.

In order to scrap my previous projects and begin building a digital marketing portfolio the right way I realized I needed to pour some effort into growing my personal social media pages. After reading some great articles on what cutting edge businesses leaders want to see during a marketing interview, I realized I needed to do a better job of showing my understanding of how to use digital marketing tools. I thought Twitter would be a great place to start experimenting in again and with a 300% growth in two weeks I am excited to keep this going.

I stayed far away from gimmicky approaches like the“follow everyone in the world and hope they follow me back,” strategy, and honestly I was surprised to see that strategy used so often still. I decided to follow a little over 250 pages these past 2 weeks, plenty of whom I knew where big time thought leaders or companies with no interest in following me back. I didn’t care though because I knew they would have some amazing information that I could learn from. I was also happy to follow people back who like myself were trying to build a high quality page with useful information.

My strategy was to focus on being a good content DJ and post high quality, relevant information on Inbound Marketing, web design, travel, photography, yoga, and meditation. My 2 goals were to see what growth I can experience by keeping a high integrity level and what the best mix of content would be.

What I’ve learned so far:

• Twitter is definitely crowded. You must post OFTEN to have any chance at being seen by people.
• I’ve been trying for 6–10 posts throughout the day, which still feels on the lower end for the kind of growth I’m looking for.
• I read that the best times to post on Twitter were between 10am-3pm, but I’m experiencing the best feedback between 12pm-6pm.
• Re-tweets are fine, but anytime I was able to give some clever feedback and quote a tweet I received more traction and follows from it.
• Having some diverse interests are OK, in fact it can help makes you seem more like a normal person not someone trying to push an agenda. However inbound marketing, web design, travel, photography, yoga, and meditation seem to be a little too many topics. I’ve cut out the yoga and meditation for now, since travel and free for commercial use photography seemed to jell more with the marketing and web design strategy focus I want to have. I will definitely keep experimenting in this area though to see what works best.

I want to keep documenting this journey of growing my Twitter page organically and share what I learn so I will follow up here in the next month or so.