Building a new identity on Twitter can seem daunting. The process is so slow to do organically (i.e. “the right way). You’ve seen the offers to pay for followers, but that does not provide you anything more than a vanity number. The users will not interact with you. They are not in your target market. Many of them aren’t even real people. It’s a waste of money. Don’t do it!
Instead, taking ten minutes out of your day on a consistent basis to follow these simple tricks will have you up and going from zero to sixty in no time!
- Take the time to setup your profile photo and header photo, and pick a theme color to match. While it may seem unnecessary, it is your identity on twitter and your first impression. Your avatar has to be bold, eye-grabbing, instantly recognizable, and memorable. When users are scrolling through their feed, that recognizable avatar is what will make them pause from scrolling and see what you have to say.
- Write a strong bio. Be creative and take chances. Humor is great. Being clever is great. But don’t sacrifice the core message behind who you are for one of these. Keep it as concise as possible. Have a contest at work to describe who/what/where/when/why your company is great in the fewest words possible. Vote on the best one and then try to perfect it. Be sure to include your website address in the appropriate field. Hashtags are also a valuable item to include in your profile if they are incredibly poignant in supporting your story and at least mildly exclusive to you.
- Build an audience with these very simple exercises. Spend 10 minutes e
very night before bed doing at least one of these activities. Try different tactics instead of doing the same thing on repeat day after day:
- Start by creating some tweets describing who you are and what you do. Include hashtags that you choose to include in your bio, but also non-exclusive hashtags that your audience might be searching on. Get at least ten of these up before you continue with the following recommendations so when people visit your profile, they can browse your initial tweets.
- After you get these up, create a @buffer account and rephrase each of them in different words to help build a queue. As you are connecting with new people, you want to reinforce your brand, story, and identity on a regular interval. Keep your queue full with these for a few months. Scheduling until you have published 100 tweets like this would be more than sufficient.
- Start by searching for hashtags that relate to what you do. Follow as many influencers as you can. (Pick people who are verified and/or have a high follower count) Many of them will follow you back.
- Each of these influencers that you follow, every time they tweet something that is valuable to you, retweet and like the post, leave a comment – but also take a minute to visit the list of THEIR followers and pick 5 more influencers from their list.
- Anytime someone follows you, don’t feel obligated to immediately follow you back. Do this first; quickly review that person’s timeline. If it looks like they are not providing value on target to what you’re into, visit the list of who they follow and choose 5 influencers from their list instead of following them back.
- Anytime you follow a new influencer, if they have a hashtag in their bio, visit that hashtag and look for someone who is tweeting valuable information and follow them.
- Periodically, visit your list of followers, pick 10-20 names and follow 5 influencers from each one.
- ENGAGE with your timeline – if you see a valuable tweet, leave a reply comment that might elicit a response from the author or other readers. Always be calculated that you are approaching your engagement in a way that you want to represent yourself, but don’t be afraid to do it with a bit of PC edge/humor/fun.
- Retweet high-quality tweets from influencers. If you can provide additional value by presenting the tweet and then pasting in the URL to the tweet instead of just a stock retweet, you’ll be enhancing the original message and providing value to your followers. Don’t do this randomly. Choose retweets that support your brand/story/identity.
- Start by creating some tweets describing who you are and what you do. Include hashtags that you choose to include in your bio, but also non-exclusive hashtags that your audience might be searching on. Get at least ten of these up before you continue with the following recommendations so when people visit your profile, they can browse your initial tweets.
- Provide extremely compelling reasons for your twitter audience to visit your website or store exclusive to them. Make them feel special and give them reasons to keep coming back to your twitter feed.
- Anytime you post premium, original content, make sure it has an image to support the message. Be sure to recycle this tweet (rephrase the tweet, but keep the link!) several times in your buffer feed, spaced out no more than twice per month.
- Keep your feed active. If you’re trying to build your brand, nothing kills the momentum like not posting for months. People want to follow an account that is alive.
These tips are by no means all-encompassing. I would love to learn your own tips and tricks to developing a loyal twitter audience. Please share them in the comments below. Better yet – click here to tweet them to me with the hashtag: #twitterhacks