The Complete Guide To Boosting Your Visibility on Twitter!
Let’s face it, we’ve all read a million guides on how to get ahead on Twitter, and too be perfectly honest, almost all of them are complete junk! Well, I’ve had 5 years and thousands of hours of experience in analyzing social platforms, including Twitter, and here I’m going to share with you some of the knowledge I’ve obtained from that experience, along with some practical tips to make your efforts on the world’s noisiest social network a lot more fulfilling.
Sometimes people make promoting content on the web a process that’s much harder than it needs to be, and often they overlook the most obvious of tactics that can otherwise prove to have astounding results. In other cases sometimes people just don’t know about a given tactic. But I have many tricks up my sleeve, so lets check them out!
Now, before we dive into the tips and tactics that will get you flying on Twitter, I need put emphasis on the fact you really need to read this whole article, otherwise the information you obtain here will not help. You need to understand the wider picture here, and not just bits and pieces. If you’re not willing to make an effort and learn, then you’re going to lose, I’m not kidding either.
Twitter Has Algorithms Too:
Just like other social platforms, Twitter has intelligent algorithms it uses to pinpoint what the platform deems to be awesome content, influential users, and those who have something unique to offer their audiences. Contrary to popular belief, your follower counts are actually irrelevant with this platform, and getting verified doesn’t mean getting more visibility either. In fact, I’ve recently seen accounts with 50K to 100K+ followers who can hardly break a single retweet on a given post. Getting verified does help to get noticed, but even then, that doesn’t mean that people won’t still ignore you. Verification is also a purely cosmetic thing, again it won’t have any affect on your visibility whatsoever.
So, what is the trick to taming Twitter’s algorithmic dragons? You have to have a real creative purpose of some sorts, and the content you produce and share must be compelling. Twitter typically gives more visibility to those who share unique and inspiring content. If people like what you have to offer, then Twitter likes you too! Also, original content gets top priority! If its something you just penned and no one has read it yet, Twitter could rank it higher.
The more people who engage with your content, the more people Twitter will send your way. This is why your underlying purpose on this platform will make or break you!
For instance, on a month where I write just a few good articles, I can literally get hundreds of people tweeting my content at literally all hours of the day and night. It’s not quantity that matters, but more so quality. Ask yourself this, what are people getting out of the content you produce and the ideas you portray? If people find value in what you do, again, so will Twitter.
Now, just as those algorithms can work in your favor, what you need to understand is that they can also work against you! For one, don’t be spammy! This means not posting a million inspirational quotes, and then dump out dumbed down blog posts with affiliate links to boot.
Twitter isn’t stupid, if you’re just tweeting nonsense, they will throw you under the bus in a heart beat! There’s plenty of junk bloggers on Twitter, and the platform’s algorithms can tell who’s producing share worthy content and who’s just playing games. Once Twitter flags you as spam, you’re pretty well done for. Often enough, Twitter wont tell you when they do flag your posts, website, etc, as potentially being spam. They just throw your visibility out with the trash.
If you’re a blogger and you make a strong effort to write compelling content, you can get tons of visibility on this platform. Twitter often puts content from trustworthy and highly regarded bloggers, creators, etc, in front of more people that content is relevant too.
Get Moving Quickly:
Scenario — You have only a few followers on Twitter, and when you share something it doesn’t seem to garner much of any engagement, and no matter what you do it often feels like you’re stuck at a dead end. The answer? Make use of the free Retweet accounts on Twitter! This is the most obvious way to get more visibility.
Here’s an example, take a look at this Tweet. Notice we got 14 retweets and 9 likes. Yep, instant visibility! Its like magic! Notice we @ referenced retweeters who shared our post. I personally have a list of over 100 of these such accounts I use on a regular basis just for brands like Gamers Bay. If I feel I need 250,000 views today, I can get them very quickly with this tactic, given I have enough new and compelling content to share.
But I must warn you, the principals and rules of the Twitter platform remain the same. If you’re tweeting dumbed down or spammy content, you’ll still get flagged and Twitter will simply throw your content away. We’ve been very successful with the retweeting tactics because we don’t share junk content, people like what we produce, and we make a solid effort to make the best content possible. In the case of the tweet shown, it links back to a youtube video, and notice we used a graphic in the post, rather than embedding the video.
We’re really picky about the content we produce too! The video showcased in this tweet is one of 60 that were published out of over 450 recordings, the rest were thrown away and never published! Yep, we literally threw out hundreds of hours of footage, because quality is what matters!
So how do you find these accounts that freely retweet your content? It’s simple, just search on Twitter for “retweet”, and a list of them will begin to pop up. The trick is to try and use the retweeting services that are the most relevant to the content you’re posting.
But, I’m going to do some of the dirty work for you! Here’s several from my list that all have good follower counts: @YTRetweets “YouTube Retweets”, they have close to 55,000 followers to share your content with. If you operate a youtube channel, they can actively help to get the word out.
If you’re a gaming journalist or operate a gaming related channel, you can use retweeters like @GamerRTer . They have over 74,000 followers, and they retweet my stuff all the time.
If you’re an indie game developer, here’s a few more that are directly tied to the industry, and they can help get you more visibility for your up and coming game: @indiegameboost @indiegamepr + @blackshellmedia(49K)
Again, try to use the retweeters that are the most relevant to your cause. Sometimes I just focus on the keywords they make use of. For instance, when we did Dinosaur mods in Left4Dead, I used @DynoRTs @RexRTs for some of the posts we shared.
When we did videos of Alien mods in Left4Dead, we used @AlienRTs (They have close to 36,000 followers at the time of this writing). While not all the content they share will be relevant to your cause, the keywords in their @names are, and people with those interests are more likely to follow them, and ultimately you as well.
See how easy this is? Just add 2 cups of common sense, and the results are amazing! After all, the whole point of this article was to take something complex and make it simple. I think I did that here.
Here’s another one:
Here’s some retweeters that are a little more generalized and not necessarily geared toward a specific topic: @HyperRTs (62,000 followers), @NightRTs (47,000 followers), @RogueRTs (15,000 followers). The more you search for these retweet accounts, the more Twitter will recommend ones that are relevant to you.
NOTE: Strategic Social Networking is Funded by The Public! Consider supporting our work on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/strategicsocialnetworking
Your Content and Posting Strategy Matters:
Someone recently asked me, “How come I don’t have the photos and videos box on my profile like others do?” The answer is simple, the photos and videos box will only show up if you’re posting images. Videos alone won’t cut it. You also have to post images often, as this feature times out within a couple of weeks at best if no new graphics are shared from a given account.
Not having this featured content on your profile is a real slap in the face to anyone who’s fighting to gain any real visibility. While all Twitter profiles have a media link, they’re clicked much less often by visitors to your profile than the photos and videos box is.
Naturally, humans are drawn to graphics more than text, and when other Twitter users go to check out your profile, if you have eye catching photos previewed for them to see, they’re going to be a lot more likely to click thru to check out your posts.
It also helps if you know when the best times are to post. Twitter is akin to New York, the city that never sleeps, in the sense that there’s always an audience available on this platform, regardless of your time zone, or what time of day or night it is. In fact, late nights on Fridays and Saturdays Twitter seems to magically come to life, especially during the summer months. Early mornings are good too, but I’ve personally seen the most engagement late at night on the weekends.
Frequency of posting appears to be a metric of importance in getting Twitter’s algorithms to want to showcase your tweets. The more active you are, the more relevant you are. If you post every day, Twitter will send more traffic your way! Likewise, I’ve noticed that blog posts typically die out within several weeks of first being published. Often, when I first hit publish on a new blog post, I’ll get monster traction during the first 3 to 5 days, and within a month’s time, most of the sharing has slowed down to a crawl, with only an occasional share here and there.
Likewise, engagement metrics can also propel your visibility on Twitter. The platform’s algorithms appear to take a keen interest in showcasing the content of users who engage often with others. The less you engage, the more you will be ignored. Keep in mind, it’s always Twitter’s goal to keep people on the platform as long as possible, so of course they’re going to try and connect people with those who’re more engaged and more likely to respond.
You should also consider pinning the very best of your content at the top of your profile. I’ve seen awesome results from pinned posts! The last pinned tweet from my gaming brand Gamers Bay had over 160,000 views at the time I replaced it with something new. I also tend to pin my latest articles to my own profile.
Hashtags still count on Twitter as well. While hashtags have kind of died down on the web over the years and aren’t as popular as they once were, they’re still a force to reckon with on Twitter. The platform does take them into consideration in terms of matching content with user search queries, and they can often make a statement that people really like and care for, such as #retrogamersunite!
Use The Right Tools:
What’s Twitter’s best kept secret? It’s an app called Just Retweet, and if used properly, it can accelerate your visibility in profound ways! Just Retweet is a platform used mainly by bloggers in various areas of the IT industry to showcase their latest content and get a boost from like-minded authors.
The platform has categories for everything from blogging, SEO, social media, and entrepreneurship, to pay-per-click, business, branding, and marketing, there’s a category for professionals here in many walks of life. Just Retweet works like this, you gain credits by retweeting others content, or you can purchase credits from the platform instead if you wish. You then use the credits you earned or paid for to showcase your own content to other users on the platform. You can also pay for premium placement and have your profile showcased on the sites home and category pages.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of people making use of it at present, it definitely needs more users.
I not only make use of this platform to showcase my latest work, but also to find other relevant content to share with my Twitter followers. It’s a win win situation to that respect.
But there’s also a few things you should know. For one, Just Retweet is unlikely to help you gain traction with your latest content if you don’t already have an established following on Twitter. When people add content to be showcased to the platform, they have the option to select a minimum number of Twitter followers to promote. This means you can select people who only have a certain number of followers to be allowed to even see your content. Users with less than the minimum follower threshold you set, wont be able to see your tweets, and they wont be able to earn credits from them either.
For instance, I typically require others to have at least 1,000 followers in order to have access to my posts. In some cases I go much higher, and have set thresholds as high as 2,500 or more. The reason for these thresholds is very simple, many of us established bloggers aren’t going to give credit where credit isn’t due! Why should I allow you to earn credit from sharing my posts when you’ve made no effort to build an audience yourself? Another reasoning is very obvious, bloggers who’re trusted have good followings and are well established on social media. If you want our backing, then make an effort to produce good content.
Also, be forewarned, because of the platform’s powerful ability to amplify content, its often the target of spammers, and many of the creators don’t create the most appealing of content. If you see spam, report it, and always be skeptical of what you share. There’s many noteworthy bloggers who use this platform, such as Mike Allton, and I typically check out and share content only from the creators I trust.
If you’re creating junk blog posts and think this platform is going to excel your message on Twitter, better think again! As I stated before, Twitter’s algorithms aren’t stupid, and if you’re producing junk, it doesn’t matter how many people you convince to share it, Twitter will just disregard it and flag you as a spammer anyway.
Also, other users on Just Retweet like myself will flag junky and spammy posts, and as I stated before, if you have no audience, then you need to start engaging to build one so this platform can be more accessible to you. The majority of us pro bloggers don’t care how many credits you offer us to share your content, if it doesn’t pass the quality sniff test, then it gets ignored, just the way it goes.
Another great platform I often use to find relevant content to share with my Twitter audience is Klout. Now, I know this platform that supposedly measures social influence has been under fire left and right for some time now by industry professionals. But, besides its intent to track social influence, it also serves an awesome purpose as a place to find great content to share with your audience. Klout also has real time indexing similar to those found in major search engines. I often find the most up to date content there, and best of all, just like Hoostsuite and Buffer, it has a built in posting scheduler, and the added bonus is its free!
Plus, Klout gives you an awesome mix of content from both major publishers and small time bloggers. A lot of variety for content, and of course, you can narrow down to searching for the specific topics you choose, and all in real time as content is published.
One more platform I’ve found to be really useful is Empire.kred, previously known as Empire Avenue. This is a social network in its own right, complete with a virtual stock market where you can invest in other players, and ultimately grow and measure your social influence.
The platform is now owned by the data analytics and influence measurement platform Kred. What really makes this platform so compelling is the ability to promote content across your external social profiles and websites through missions.
When you launch a new mission, you can ask other users on the platform to check out your latest blog post, social profile, or whatever you like, in exchange for eaves, the platforms digital currency. While can’t ask for specific actions, more often than not people who’re relevant to your mission who accept it will often engage with you and your content, helping to give you a huge boost on social media.
2 of our largest media brands on the web (Strategic Social Networking and Gamers Bay) have had a social presence on this platform since 2013, and they’re among the most popular of brands on the platform today.
In fact, our biggest supporters all co-exist on Empire.kred today, and they often engage with us across our brands social profiles virtually 7 days a week.
What’s so great about this platform is the fact you cannot only use it to promote your Twitter profiles and brand accounts, but you can use to promote just about anything on the web. Highly recommended, and definitely worth checking out!
For an added boost, you can purchase promoted missions for $5 that put your mission posts front and center to all of the platforms audience. Kred often gives out free promoted missions from time to time as well. In fact, we’ve gotten several hundred of them for free over time.
The trick to getting ahead with this platform is get on the leaders board, which takes time, but those who land a spot there get the most visibility. My brands are among them.
Gaining Momentum:
If your Twitter account is a newbie, the platform won’t just let you roam free and follow a million people or hand you a ton of visibility either. Whatever you do, don’t attempt to mass follow random people with a brand new account, otherwise Twitter will suspend you!
What you can and should do is engage with others on the platform first and foremost, followed by having a good content strategy and being active. But you need momentum right? Here’s what you do, follow 30 to 45 people a day 3 to 5 days a week, and make sure its not random follows, but people who’re actually relevant to the type of content you post, or that really interest you. Don’t make all the follows all at once either, break it up. Going over the 50 follows a day mark will put your account at risk of suspension, so 45 is in the safe zone.
Once you have an established account, Twitter’s algorithms will allow you a lot more freedom, and they will typically give you a lot more visibility as well. For instance, I can go and follow 500 people right now if I feel like it and Twitter wont say a word. The reason being is my personal profile is over 5 years old, its an established and trusted account.
The follow limits for everyone stand at a 1,000 a day for those who’re white listed to do so.
If your account is under a year old and doesn’t have much activity, Twitter may put limits on the amount of people you can follow. The absolute worst thing you can do is follow random people, this not only sends a bad signal to Twitter that you’re up to no good, but it leaves people who visit your profile scratching their heads in disbelief. I can’t count how many profiles I’ve viewed where the person in question is following tens of thousands of random people who aren’t relevant to their purpose in any way.
After all, why would you want to have thousand sof followers who have no interest in what you do? That would be pointless now wouldn’t it.
While you can’t always control who follows you, you do control who you follow.
I often do make manual follows to relevant users on the platform, maybe a 100 or so at a time to my brand accounts I manage on the platform. But I never follow random people, relevance is key here. Twitter typically has a 20% threshold in terms of followers as well. Most accounts must maintain at least 20% more followers than they’re actually following themselves.
Going above that mark with an account that’s 6 months old or less and Twitter will respond by suspending your account, or placing limits on how many people you can follow.
So you’ve followed people, but you may have noticed that not all of them have followed back. Well, this is why we have apps like Manage Flitter. With this platform you can see who’s actually followed you back and who hasn’t, as well as what followers accounts are inactive for a given period of time, among other notable metrics. When I follow people with my brand accounts, those who don’t follow back get thrown under the bus and unfollowed at a later date. It’s nothing personal, but if they aren’t following me back, then what use are they?
To be perfectly honest, I don’t always follow back the people who follow me either, and often they will unfollow me for the same reason. Its not that I wouldn’t follow them back, but it depends on whether or not I find them relevant in some way, and whether or not I have the time to view who my current followers are.
Your Profile is Everything:
For starters, have a bio that clearly explains who you are, what you do, and what your interests are. More than half of all Twitter users actually get this part dead wrong, and that’s why I’m going to make a fuss about it. Keep in mind, whatever you include in your bio will travel with you across the platform as you follow other users. I can’t count how many bios I’ve seen that make stupid statements like, “I’m a blogger, follow me now”, “Youtuber, check out my channel and subscribe”, or that include a stupid inspirational quotes that tells others nothing about you. Even worse yet are the bio’s that include a bunch of short broken statements, followed by tons of abbreviated nonsense that makes no logical sense to the average person.
People aren’t psychic, tell them what you’re about so they’ll feel compelled to click through to your profile and learn more about you; and who knows, maybe follow you as well.
Also, include a link at the bottom of your bio that leads to your website, youtube channel, etc. People do click these!
Don’t Buy Fake Followers:
This is the absolute stupidest thing people do on Twitter! Never buy followers period, regardless if a platform states they’re real or not. It’s not only a violation of Twitter’s terms of service, but that last thing you want is a million spam accounts with no profile pictures in your list of followers. Some huge brands and even government agencies have been busted buying followers in the past, and doing so honestly destroys your integrity with the wider public.
Also, fake followers wont engage with you or your content, so they honestly serve no good purpose to begin with.
Connecting With Influencers:
So, we’ve all heard the argument that connecting with influencers is crucial to growing your purpose and presence on the social web. Well, I’m here to tell you that argument is nonsense and a waste of time. Why waste your time chasing after the influence of others when you could be chasing after your own! What is your influence on the social audiences you interact with? This is what matters. The influence of others will not define your own.
Protect Your Account:
The last thing you want to do is spend thousands of hours building an audience on Twitter only to realize you’re locked out of your account with no way back in. This is why you should tie in a mobile phone number to any account you create on the platform, or risk losing your account forever! At times Twitter will ask you to verify who you are by texting a validation code to your phone. If you phone number changed for some reason and you forgot to update it on Twitter, say goodbye to your account, as Twitter’s customer service is impossible to reach, and they likely will not help.
Lists and Moments:
Twitter lists are pretty much dead these days. There’s a few good ones out that there that still operate as meetup groups, but for the most part they’ve been dead in the water for years. They’re great for keeping track of personal interests, friends, etc, but not so great for gaining visibility. I’m sure I’ve been added to thousands of them over the years, and they’ve never made any difference as far as my visibility went, and to be perfectly honest, I can’t remember the last time I actually clicked to view one on someone’s profile.
Moments on the other hand is user curated list of important topics, and its section of your profile that really help to garner engagement. This is the place to repost your best tweets for later viewing by others. Moments definitely aren’t as heavily noticed as media links, but they do help.
Use Cards:
If you have a website, make use of Twitter cards. Cards offer bloggers, publishers, and others the ability to format how their content will appear on Twitter. Here’s an example card I made for an article on one of my site’s:
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@usernamehere">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@usernamehere">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Why I Still Have Faith in Google Plus!">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Why its not the end of Google Plus! What both its community base and Google can do to revive it!">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="http://www.pctechauthority.com/clip-art/community-logo.jpg">This card guarantees me Twitter will display a specific image I choose, along with a good title and more in-depth description. Cards really work too! I got tens of thousands of shares from them in the past. By the way, pardon my ridiculous @username I didn’t want to use my real name on Twitter, although I’m reconsidering doing so now. As far as user name’s goes, it doesn’t matter if you use your real name or not, it will not negatively effect you visibility whether you do or don’t. On the other hand, its going to be a lot harder to get verified without using your real name.
You can actually just copy that template I provided and fill in the spaces with your own info to save time. Keep in mind though, all cards must be validated, and Twitter doesn’t approve them for every website.
Another benefit to cards is better ranking in search engines, especially Google. I’ve noticed that Google raises typically raises the rank of sites that make use of proper meta data to better explain their content.
Promoted Tweets:
Sometimes you just need a little more visibility for a really important tweet for your brand page, etc, and promoted tweets are simple way to make that happen. Be forewarned though, I’ve noticed that advertising on twitter is among the most expensive of all social platforms, and a lot more costlier than the typical boosted post on Facebook. Nonetheless, I think promoted tweets are a great way to reach a wider, targeted audience, just be ready to pay big!
Twitter Analytics:
To help you to better understand your audience, you really should consider making use of Twitter’s free to use analytics. Twitters robust analytics provides good month by month data, such as how many new followers you’ve gained, how many profile visits you’ve had, your reach in terms of impressions, and what are your top tweets, among other notable metrics.
One thing I learned from analyzing my analytics data is that often large portions of my visibility are actually visitors back to my brands profiles. In some cases the number of profile visits can easily top out in the tens of thousands. This got me thinking, why not have a pinned post with links back to the most relevant alternate profiles I want visitors to see? That’s exactly what we did, and here’s an example:
Notice the pinned post shown here has an eye catching graphic, and just below are several links to the most important related profiles we wanted to promote. People often click through to Gamers Bay’s profile on Twitter, see those links and simply click thru to check them out.
Don’t Harass People:
While people may get away with their trashy behavior in real life, Twitter doesn’t play when it comes to abuse in any form! They have a zero tolerance policy for harassment! If you threaten and harass others, your account will be closed and you will be banned from the platform permanently.
While you may not agree with everything you see on Twitter, its still possible to make your argument in a reasonable manner. Twitter does get trolls from time to time, and I in fact had to deal with one today. The best thing to do is to just block the user, report their abusive comments, and walk away. Don’t respond to harassers, you’re just wasting your breath. Unfortunately, there’s some people on this earth who make use of social media to spread their hatred for humanity, don’t feed into it.
Likewise, Twitter’s algorithms will respond to potential abuse any time they spot it, even if your comments were never reported. In some cases they take all your visibility away and remove all your tweets for a matter of hours or days from the home streams of other users. If you use excessive profanity or demeaning language in your tweets, you’re asking for trouble.
Engagement Equals Growth:
Naturally, humans love the company of others, and when it comes to social media, its a lot easier to get the attention of others if you’re actually engaging and have something of value to say. The whole “Post and Run” strategy sucks, and its the number one reason people fail at building a social audience. If its engagement and traffic you want, then you need to be engaged yourself.
People are also 10X more likely to want to engage with posts that already have an ongoing conversation. The reasoning is simple, humans don’t want to engage with robots, but with real humans.
Trust me, you’d be surprised at how much more attention you’ll receive from others just by commenting and engaging. Out of all the tactics I use to grow my brands and social profiles on the web, engagement remains my number metric of choice. And, as I noted earlier, Twitter tends to give more visibility to those who’re more engaged, just the way it goes.
Conclusion:
What this all boils down to is a simple strategy:
- Produce compelling content that people like!
- Promote using proven methods that work (Empire.kred, Just Retweet, retweeters, etc.)
- Actually engage! Connect with like minded people and don’t worry about the infuencers, its your own influence that matters. Make sure you’re talking, run your mouth! Be sure to share others content as well, its help to win their approval of you.
- Check your analytics on a regular basis, it can help you to better understand what is working and what isn’t.
- Use graphics, alot! Tweets with graphics perform much better on Twitter than any other content. Make sure to use hashtags too!
- Have a real purpose! Is the content you produce entertaining or useful to others for some reason? Produce original and compelling content on a regular basis, get tons of visibility in return!
Written and published by Daniel Imbellino — Co-Founder of Strategic Social Networking and pctechauthority.com. Many thanks for reading. Be sure to check out Strategic Social Networking Community on Google+ to connect with tens of thousands of IT professionals and learn effective strategies to grow your social presence online. You’re also welcome to follow Strategic’s brand page on G+ for the latest social media and IT industry news. You’re also welcome to connect with me on Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DanielImbellino
Support Strategic Social Networking on Patreon:
