Beginner Blogger

In contrast to my How I Got 1000 TARGETED Twitter Followers In 30 Days blog post, I wanted to write about how you can get yourself twitter followers without the need to go out and add people yourself. Granted, you probably won’t get as many followers than if you went out and followed as many people as possible using services like Buzzom, but I believe if people voluntarily add you to twitter than those people are much more valuable to you. They went out of their way to add you, so as long as they’re not a spam account, you must be doing something right!

Here are my top 5 ways you can increase your twitter following without begging for one:

1. Provide valuable tweets

First and foremost, the main reason anyone would want to add you to twitter is because you provide great tweets. You won’t find yourself with many followers if you have an empty twitter account with no tweets. You’ll also find yourself lonely if you provide meaningless updates like ‘at the shops’, ‘lunch was yum’, ‘walking home’ etc.

Picture this – you’ve just started a twitter account and you’ve been focusing solely on creating great quality tweets. Suddenly someone finds you through search.twitter.com (or something like this) that likes what you’re saying about that certain topic. This person that just added you has over 1000 friends. He ReTweets one of your tweets which is broadcast to the 1000+ on that persons list. Those 1000+ people can then follow you on twitter or ReTweet your message again to their list, which may be broadcast to even more tweeters out there.

This is why the quality and value of your tweets are so important. Provide great quality and value and you’re sure to attract many many people.

2. Engage with your audience

Don’t go on autopilot. Don’t create one of those spam accounts that just read out RSS feeds. Sure put some auto-RSS feeds on your twitter account if they relate to your niche or your purpose, but make sure you’re a person as well. People are more likely to recommend you to others willingly if you’re an approachable and engaging person on twitter.

There is a novelty on twitter on Fridays called Follow Friday (#FF or #FollowFriday) where people nominate people that they think everyone on their twitter list should follow. I’ve found that the people that recommend me for Follow Friday are the ones I have engaged with on twitter the most, some have very large twitter followings so I’ve generated a lot of followers this way.

A great idea is to make it a habit to send a message to every person that adds you to twitter that you are going to add back. Your relationship will improve dramatically this way than not interacting with them at all and them just being ‘another one to the list’

3. ReTweet valuable relative content

This is why I believe you should have a purpose/niche on twitter. If you have a clear purpose/niche people that are interested in your niche will follow you. If you ReTweet something related to your niche it goes to everyone on your list. So it’s of great benefit to have people following you that are interested in what you ReTweet.

ReTweeting also builds relationships. People love it when you ReTweet their tweets. So if someone tweets something you like and you think others on your list will enjoy ReTweet it because they might re-ReTweet it to others not following you and you may find yourself with more quality followers!

4. Follow those that are beneficial to you

Don’t just follow random people and don’t feel you have to follow people back if they follow you. You choose who you follow, no-one else. If people are thinking of following you they may check out who else you’re following. If you’re following a bunch of spam accounts and people tweeting unpleasant links or offensive content they may think twice before following you.

It doesn’t make any sense to follow someone that won’t gain anything from your twitter account – so don’t do it. Having 10 people that follow me that find my content useful, helpful and more likely to click on my links is much more valuable than 100 random followers that will ignore most if not everything I have to say.

5. Have a custom Twitter background, avatar, bio and preferably website.

You should fill these out before you even start tweeting. A bio and picture I feel is absolutely necessary and bare minimum to at least know you’re human. I would also change your background from the default blue/green background.

Personally I only add people that I feel are real people. I’m very picky now of who I follow now because I don’t want to follow those I’m not interested in.

A custom background, avatar, bio and preferably a link to your website is ideal. I always check out a website of someone before I add them to twitter. If it takes me to a sales page I probably won’t add you unless I’m impressed with your tweets and you’re not spamming.

To clarify – spamming to me is constant tweets that link off to sales pages and it’s obviously just a twitter account made to create money. I don’t want any part of that thanks.

Find your purpose

Make sure you find your purpose on twitter. I use @beginnerblogger mainly to help others with their blogging, provide valuable blogging tips I feel bloggers and beginner bloggers will gain value from and also from time to time put in the odd personal tweet. I make sure the personal tweets are not boring like ‘off to the shops’, I try and make them interesting too.

Something I’m going to do over the next few weeks is really go through my twitter list, engage with those I haven’t engaged with and unfollow the ‘unhuman’ twitter accounts that are of no benefit to me. I want to engage with real people. My struggle at the moment is that I am following too many people and it’s near impossible to keep up with everyone as much as I’d like.

What do you feel are great ways to get more quality followers without having to beg for them? Reply in the comments below.

Enjoyed this post? Here are some more you may like:

1. How I Got 1000 TARGETED Twitter Followers In 30 Days
2. Twitter Had Crashed
3. Twitter TweetDeck and some Tips

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