12 Steps To Grow On Twitter

Authors ask me all of the time:  “What can I do to grow my followers on Twitter?”

There are many ways to answer it, but let’s look at the core basics first:

1.      Say something controversial.  Offer something for free. Help a charity or good cause. Say what hasn’t been said. Praise an issue.  Expose a secret.  In short, write an interesting tweet – others will then circulate it.

2.      Make sure you are on Twitter.  Fill out your profile and share your Twitter handle on all of your branding tools:  blog, website, business card, email signature, other social media profiles, and on press releases.

3.      Tweet daily, preferably five to eight times a day.  Like the lottery, you need to be in it to win it. If you don’t tweet, no one pays attention to you.

4.      Be present on Twitter.  Monitor what people are saying that you are following.  Seek out tweets to retweet or ones that inspire you to direct tweet the original sender of that tweet.  Be engaged.

5.      Set goals to build up your number of followers.  Take note each day or week of your progress. If you get 10 new followers a day, you’ll hit 3,650 in just a year’s time.  As you build up your follower numbers people will perceive you as being worth following, so numbers beget numbers.

6.      If you want more followers, follow more people.  A certain percentage will naturally follow you back.

7.      Make quality tweets.  Some tweets should link to your blog and if people start liking what they read, they’ll agree to follow you. Additionally, if your tweet cites useful resources or great content, people will come to see you as a good source and follow you.

8.      Direct tweet people on a regular basis.  Do searches and twitter for categories of people who could be your fans.  Let’s take a topic like dieting.  Maybe you are a nutritionist who wrote a book about weight loss.  You can search for fellow nutritionists, authors, doctors, dieting, health and a host of other topics.  Tweet those people something they’d find of interest, such as a relevant blog post.

9.      Email people that you know and ask them to follow you on Twitter.  Then ask them to tweet about you to their followers.

10.  Give people incentives to follow you.  If people want to download a free white paper or book chapter or a perceived asset/resource, ask them to follow you on Twitter. Even better, have them bring three more followers as well.  Marketing is a number game – keep asking people to do things for you and never stop asking.

11.  Seek out an influencer. Check hashtags and see who writes on topics related to you.  See how many followers they have.  For a select few, seek to befriend them. Think of what you can give to or offer them, from a support and great ideas to partnering on a project.  Simply ask how you can help them and they may just help you.

12.  Don’t forget to tweet images.  I love words, but I admit that an image is worth a thousand words – or at least 140 characters.  Images have a better chance of going viral.

Twitter can help you grow your digital footprint, and in turn, raise book sales and increase traffic to your blog and website. The above 12 methods, if followed loyally, don’t guarantee anything – but they are the foundation for positioning yourself to have a chance at growing your platform.  Be authentic, aggressive, and creative and you’ll tap into a formula for Twitter success.

2016 Book Marketing & Book Publicity Toolkithttp://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/2016-book-marketing-book-publicity.html

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2016