The other day, I initiated a forum discussion asking people how they attracted followers on Twitter. One participant proudly explained how he went from 230 to 2300 followers in just a couple of months.
Well I have news for you. It really doesn’t matter how many followers you have. It’s the quality of followers that counts, not quantity.
It all takes time
Just to prove my point, I decided to visit a website that helps you get more followers called www.twiends.com.
Twiends use a system of credit, also known as “seeds” to create the incentive for you to follow someone and for people to follow you. When you follow someone you earn seeds from them, and vice versa when they follow you. You can decide how many seeds you want to offer per follow, and when you run out you remain on the list so people can still follow you if they like.
I decided to do a little experiment to see for myself how it works. Within minutes I attracted dozens of followers but there was a price to pay:
- Most of those following clearly had no interest in me, which was obvious from looking at their profile. Not surprisingly, more than half unfollowed after about a day (probably because I didn’t follow them back).
- Some the followers had embarrassing and in some cases offensive profiles. I really didn’t want to be associated with them.
This all raises a couple of questions:
- If you are simply attracting followers for the sake of it, what are you hoping to achieve if they have no interest in your products or services? Are they ever likely to buy from you or refer / retweet you to others?
- If you attract a mass of irrelevant followers, how attractive are you to other potential followers?
If you want to use Twitter to promote your business, grow slowly. Think carefully about the sort of people you want to follow and what you can tweet about that will attract them to follow you back. So if you are an IFA for example, you might focus on targeting local accountants. And your tweets might be about tax saving tips. Start of by carrying out a local search on twitter e.g. “accountant, harrow”. Once you have found one or two people to follow, Twiter makes it easy for you by suggesting other similar businesses that you can follow. Some will follow you back.
It takes time to build up a core of loyal followers. But once you have a network of followers that like what you say and interact with you, growing your audience just gets easier and easier over time. Getting the first 100 followers is hard work, getting the next 500 is a lot easier.
We have all read about viral campaigns where complete nobodies have become overnight sensations. But that’s the exception, not the rule. There’s no reason why you can’t eventually become a major brand, but you have start with attracting the right people.
