When people ask me how to get more Twitter followers, I explain that there are only two ways to increase the number of followers they have.
Strategy 1: Follow people you’re interested in and hope they follow you back (i.e. find people yourself).
Strategy 2: Make your Twitter identity (bio, Tweets etc) so interesting and relevant that people start to follow you (i.e. people find you).
Obviously strategy one has the potential to be more time-consuming than strategy two. However, when you’re starting out on Twitter, strategy one may be the quickest way to build up your followers over a short period of time.
Strategy two (people finding you and following you) is the most attractive as it requires little work on your behalf. Also, I have a belief that these people have the potential to be better quality followers than those who only follow you back after you follow them.
In this article we’ll look at ways to find more Twitter followers. In my next article we’ll discuss ways you can attract more followers.
Find people on Twitter to follow – Twitter Advanced Search
The easiest way to find interesting people on Twitter to follow is to search for them. Go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced and have a look at all the search options.
Assuming you’ve already done your research about the type of person you are targeting, think about the words to search for. In this example I’m searching for users who are Tweeting about Frank Kern. At the time of writing, Frank is launching a new product and there’s a lot of Tweets about him. Parts of my target market are people who are involved in internet marketing. Many of these people would be tweeting about Frank’s product launch.
If I use Frank Kern’s name in the ‘Exact Phrase’ search box and submit the search, I’m taken to a page that lists all the people who’ve been tweeting about Frank. I can then click on each person to view their user profile and decide whether I’ll follow them or not.
You can also search by Twitter hashtag. This is helpful if there’s a tag (or tags) relevant to your niche.
What if your business targets a specific geographic region? Say you own a restaurant in Boston and want to target people in the Boston area. Use Twitter’s advanced search to find people who Tweet from the Boston area.
Find people on Twitter to follow – WeFollow
WeFollow.com is a useful tool to find people to follow on Twitter. You search for people to follow via the use of tags. Interested in internet marketing? Just enter ‘Internet Marketing’ into the search bar and it’ll show you the most popular people in that field.
You can also register your Twitter account and select from a range of tags (categories) that reflect your interests – internet marketing, entertainment etc. Once you’re registered people can find you using the website.
Find people on Twitter to follow – Follow other people’s followers
Identify who the influential people are in your niche and follow them to see what they’re tweeting about. But take it a step further – follow their followers.
Think about it. The followers are following this person because they’re interested in what they’ve got to say. If they’re interested in him, they’ll probably be interested in you and the things you’re tweeting about.
Head to ReFollow.com and login using your Twitter ID. On the right hand side of the page you’ll see an option to search “Users who are following…”. Type in the name of an influential Twitter user and ReFollow will display a page showing 100 of their users (there is an option to see more). Click on the users’ picture and have a look at their Twitter profile. If they look interesting, follow them.
Find people on Twitter to follow – Search their bios
I’ve been using Tweetadder to help with some of my Twitter following. It has a neat feature that allows me to search the content in someone’s bio. This is particularly useful if you want to search for specific words in someone’s Twitter bio.
Looking for guitar players? Use Tweetadder to search the bio boxes for the word ‘guitarist’.
Use your imagination, but think about how powerful this tool can be. I’ve used it a bit recently to search for people in particular niches and it’s been very useful.
A free tool that also searches bios is TweepSearch.com.
So there you go. Some simple ideas you can implement right now to get more Twitter followers.
In the next Twitter article I write, I’ll look at strategies to get people to find you on Twitter.
Let me know what you think about this article. I know there are a lot of different sites out there that make following someone on Twitter easier. Let me know your favourite sites and any strategies you have to get more followers.
See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.
Related posts:
- How To Get More Twitter Followers Part 1 I’ve been spending a bit of time on Twitter over...
- Your Twitter Strategy I’m sure you’ve all heard about Twitter. It’s one of...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
