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33 Comments

How did you get your followers on Twitter?

Hey,
recently I decided to revive my very old account. I'm trying to post something on the regular base, comment a lot but I don't see any affect on the amount of followers. I even read the books about working with Twitter but I don't know how to follow the advice "help people". I would like to and ready to, but how? Where can I find those who need help? I was trying to search by "How ..." but it shown me too much unrelated tweets. So, I'm really stuck now.

What's your experience on getting followers?

Thanks!

  1. 4

    Posting often is great, but if you have no followers you're really not going to get many views, likes, or retweets, which will lead to more followers. You're mostly posting to the wind.

    A great way to start is follow people in your niche (e.g. programming or dancing) and reply to their posts with good commentary. Now here is the important part: follow and post replies to those with a lot of followers, likes, and comments. Looks for people with thousands tens of thousands of follower with frequent likes and replies on their tweets. Your replies will then be viewed by a lot more people, increasing your influence and followers.

    If you can be the first to reply you'll be at the top of the list. You can turn on notifications for some people you follow so you can immediately see when they post and reply.

    But remember, this will get you more exposure, but the content still needs to be relevant for people to want to follow you.

    P.S. I just followed you :)

    1. 1

      Oh, that's the interesting advice! I will try! Thanks for being my new followers, followed you back!

  2. 3

    What i did during the last months (bring me 400 followers):

    • Pick a niche and stick to it. I choose nocode/buildinpublic/indiehacker
    • Follow the "micro influencers" in that niche, interact with them. Be the first to comment
    • Interact with the guys in the comments of these influencers. Make friends
    • Tweet about YOUR experience about it, at least once a day
    • Use hashtags of your niche
    • Use DMs, a lot. That's how you create connection.

    My twitter profile, happy to talk further my DMs are open ;) : https://twitter.com/angezanetti

    1. 2

      Great advice. When I was being more active on Twitter like this I was seeing growth.

    2. 2

      Thanks for the advice.
      I definitely can comment, and I always try to use hashtags.
      But as for DMs, I'm not a big fan of them, and it's hard for me to start such a private conversation. Just don't know what to write about. Btw, the same about comments, and tweets, yes, it's almost nothing to write about. How I fixed the bug? Boring... How I fight with PayPal? I don't want to look like a troublemaker. Sometimes, yes, there is something to write about but pretty rarely.

      1. 1

        Think of what you achieve in a day and tweet it if it can be useful for any other maker.
        Or think of you a year ago, what did you learn? What would be useful for you to know? Tweet for the person you were a year ago, or when you started your career

        1. 1

          Well, I can't imagine what useful for any other maker I can post. And as for me, I never considered Twitter as a source of something useful. Haha this is the root of the problem.

    3. 1

      Another problem is how to find influencers. I started from the hashtag #startup (that is one I most interested in) but, to my surprise, it only shown tweets about some show or series, not real startup founders. How did you find them?

      UPD Okay, I have some idea. I should try it and then will tell if it works :)

      1. 2

        Try to narrow down a bit, #startup is super crowdy!

  3. 1

    I got most of my followers in the early years of Twitter, when the platform was still novel and getting followed was easier.

    I later tried most of what's commonly suggested. Yet my followers grow at a snail's pace. Replicating tactics and tips, in general, isn't as effective. It takes a lot of luck and stuff outside of your control, unless you're already well known or have unique talents.

    It takes an audience to build an audience.

    1. 1

      It takes an audience to build an audience.

      I'm thinking the same but I'm still looking if there are any hacks to crack this pattern :)

      1. 1

        The only hack I'm aware of is time, waiting for something to happen.

  4. 1

    I got up to 10,000 without ever really doing anything on Twitter -- I just tried to make useful stuff elsewhere and people followed on Twitter as a side effect. I'm slightly more active now and it's quite helpful, but for years I only used it for customer support and it still grew fairly steadily as long as I wasn't being totally useless/secretive in my other work.

    1. 1

      Haha I love such comments so much!

      There are 2 true tactics for gaining followers:

      • make something significant /noticeable outside
      • apply some working tips and tricks in Twitter.

      As for me, unfortunately, I didn't do any significant or/and noticeable and I support my own clients using email and slack, so the first tactic wouldn't definitely work for me. But anyway, thanks for sharing your experience!

  5. 1

    The first advice I would give is to ask yourself why you want to use Twitter. If you can define an objective in clear terms with metrics orientated goals, it will give you a starting point to work towards, and you can then define a strategy to reach that objective.

    Followers will then, ahem, follow on from that (excuse the pun).

    1. 1

      I want to use Twitter because I think I may find my target audience among twitter users. And because I think it would be easier for me to tell them about what I'm doing (my Project).

      1. 1

        In that case, identify about 10 accounts that specialise in your area of interest and start engaging with their tweets. In addition, review their followers and follow any who seem aligned to you (perhaps about 30 per day), see what reciprocal follows you generate and then nurture those contacts and get to know them through engagement with their output. That should start to see followers build up organically.

  6. 1

    followed. I'll keep it simple

    What would you like to be known for? Then stick to that and only that. I had around 250 in May, now I'm about 1000

    I plan to take 2-3 accounts below 75 follower and help them grow to 500 in the next 2 months. To see if my advice is actionable :D

    1. 1

      If you want a way to track those accounts, I can hook you up with ongoing free access to @arcademetrics for each of those accounts until your experiment is over. Hit me up on Twitter (DM's open of course)

      1. 1

        yeah, sure, DM is on the way

    2. 1

      Followed you back.

      What would you like to be known for?

      I want to be known for the project that doesn't exist yet.
      I'm interested to be among your guinea pigs :)

      1. 1

        👍 stick around and watch my tweets

        so, regarding "known for the project that doesn't exist yet", are you tweeting in that direction, preparing your audience already?

        1. 1

          Not yet, if you are talking about the project.

    3. 2

      This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

      1. 1

        will start with it in a week or two, keep an eye on my tweets, not sure how else to keep you updated :)

  7. 1

    I am in the exact same situation as yours and was about to post something to ask also, I will follow this post and I followed you just now on twitter also ;)

    1. 1

      Followed you back, thanks!

  8. 1

    It somewhat reflects your renown outside of Twitter as well.

    Like Ronaldo for instance has a crazy amount of followers. Probably because he’s a football star (soccer for the American friends), not because he knows Twitter books by heart.

    I don’t know what my point is. Will try to follow you guys anyway.

    1. 1

      Thanks the your point even if you don't know what it is.

  9. 1

    Did notable stuff outside of Twitter and tweeted about it. Works pretty well!

    1. 1

      My goal is to find followers before I do something notable haha.

  10. 1

    Why do you follow anyone? Because they are posting something you find valuable, entertaining, inspiring, insightful. Add to conversations on Twitter and give value to people that follow you.

    1. 1

      Because they are posting something you find valuable, entertaining, inspiring, insightful.

      Honestly, it's not the reason why I would follow anyone. I really don't like to follow many accounts because my feed is absolutely mess then. So, I even don't know how other people solve this problem.

  11. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      Thanks for your insights! But, as you can see, nothing you did, worked.
      So, the fact is you and me are doing something wrong haha :)
      The question is how to do right?

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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