How to Get Twitter Followers to Grow Your Social Following

Twitter is still a relevant social media platform for brands who want to grow their online visibility and social following. With 192 million active daily users, 187 million of which are considered monetisable, Twitter offers a wide-ranging potential audience for your brand. The platform is fantastic for raising brand awareness and capturing social proof. What’s more, 82% of B2B content marketing professionals leveraged Twitter for their organic content over the past year.

Growing your brand—or your clients’—is easier when you have the right strategies in your back pocket. If you're wondering how to get Twitter followers so you can better grow your brand, this is the post for you.

Let’s take a look at a few effective ways to both attract new Twitter followers and get your audience to grow your platform for you.

1. Jump In On Trending Topics

Getting your brand seen on Twitter means monitoring and jumping into trending topics in real-time. Twitter moves at a rapid pace, with millions of conversations happening all over the world at any given time. It’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s trending from one day to the next, and get in on high-visibility conversations where you can add the most value.

There are a few ways you can identify and jump into trending topics or popular conversations. From Twitter’s Explore tab, click Trending to view a feed that’s populated with topics, Tweets, hashtags, and conversations that are hot right now.

alt text: Get twitter followers with trending topics

Another way to identify popular conversations is by simply scrolling down your Home page. You’ll see conversations with a high level of interaction and interest, and which the people you follow are discussing. Twitter will also occasionally populate topics you might be interested in.

While Twitter has a wide variety of topics available to choose from, choose carefully. Invest your time in trends that build your brand, or your clients’. It’s easy to get lost in the daily flood of content, but if you want to succeed at the Twitter game, it’s important to focus your efforts.

2. Use Your Analytics to Discover High-Engaging Content

Highly engaging content can show up in the feeds of your followers who engage. This gives you a boost in the Twitter algorithm. Take a look at your analytics to see which of your posts drive the most engagement, and use those as a model for your best practices.

From the left-hand menu on your Twitter Home page, click More, then Analytics.

From your Analytics dashboard, click Tweets. You can filter by a date range and by Tweets, Top Tweets, Tweets and Replies, or Promoted Tweets. Twitter Analytics will show you a comprehensive list of your Tweets that fall within your selected date range. You’ll be able to see which of your Tweets were most actively engaged with, which got the most clicks, and more.

Twitter analytics to track your Twitter followers

Once you’ve tapped into the content that performs best, it’s time to try replicating those effects. Create more Tweets like the ones that your followers engaged with most, and see how that affects your reach and performance. Don’t be afraid to experiment here. Some strategies might be a flash in the pan, while others may consistently earn high engagement. You won’t know until you try.

3. Create Twitter Events Centered Around Your Brand

Another way to attract more followers on Twitter is to create Twitter events that are centered around your brand. For example, Twitter chats are an excellent option. These real-time Tweet chats encourage high engagement and discussion, and they can generate a lot of attention when marketed well.

Author and goal coach Debra Eckerling hosts a weekly Goal Chat on Twitter, where she and her followers discuss upcoming goals and the steps they’re taking to pursue them from week to week. Take a look:

Twitter chats get your audience engaged because of the real-time nature of these events. Audiences love to be actively involved and communicate with their favorite brands during live events, so leverage the scarcity of these interactions to attract them.

4. Host Twitter Contests

Contests and giveaways are another great way to build your following on social media platforms, including Twitter. You can use Twitter contest software such as ShortStack to capture lead information. ShortStack has options and suggestions for successful Twitter contests to help you get started.

Retweet or reshare contests are both good options. You can also create a branded hashtag to help track entries. Before you begin, though, it’s a good idea to check out Twitter’s contest guidelines to ensure you’re sticking to the platform’s terms of service.

5. Use Twitter Ads for Expanded Reach

If you’re looking to further expand your reach, consider using Twitter Ads. While ads may not always be as effective as organic strategies, they can still work well. It’s possible to use ads to get your Tweets in front of users who might not have seen them otherwise.

This promoted Tweet by toothpaste company Sensodyne appears among Tweets in the main feed.

Want an easy jump-start on Twitter Ads? Target existing customers with an ad retargeting strategy. You’ll succeed in both re-engaging your current followers, and as an added bonus, you may attract some of their followers, too.

6. Consistently Post Valuable Content on Twitter

Another way to attract more followers to your Twitter presence is by consistently posting valuable content. Curate and share content that’s in line with your brand, but don’t just retweet links to blog posts, videos, and podcast episodes without comment. Instead, make them interesting. Pull a quote to share in the Tweet itself, or add your own comments about why you think your followers might enjoy the content.

In the following Retweet, Brandon Davis shares a video of broadcasting legend Marv Albert, who retired after 55 years. Notice how Brandon added his own comments about the sports icon before sharing the video.

How Not to Grow Your Twitter Follower List

While there are many great ways to get more Twitter followers, there are also practices you should avoid. Let’s take a look at a few ways not to grow your Twitter follower list, all of which are considered platform manipulation and against Twitter’s Terms of Service:

Follow-for-follow strategies or software. This method does not help you connect with your target audience. It also lowers your engagement rate, which lowers your potential rank in Twitter’s algorithm.
Buying followers. If you purchase followers, they’re not likely to be your target market (and most likely, none of them will be). In addition to being against TOS, this will also negatively affect your rank in the algorithm.
Reciprocal inflation. Engaging in coordinated activity with other users, such as “follow trains”, to boost your numbers is another violation of Twitter’s TOS.
Posting blog posts or other curated content with little to no context or explanation. Twitter discourages posting links without comments, so make sure you’re adding your thoughts to the content you share.

How to Track Twitter Followers

You can keep track of your Twitter followers in Twitter Analytics. The dashboard will show you how much your follower count has grown or decreased over time. If you scroll down your dashboard home page, Twitter Analytics will show you your Tweets, Tweet impressions, Profile visits, Mentions, and New followers in a monthly summary.

Take note of significant increases or decreases in your follower count. These insights may give you important information about your activity on Twitter and how it resonates with your followers.

Final Thoughts

Twitter is a fast-paced environment where many brands are gaining high visibility and growing their followers.

If you're wondering how to get Twitter followers to grow your brand, it’s going to be important to stay involved in trending topics, leverage your analytics for insights into your followers’ engagement, create real-time events on the platform, hold contests, use Twitter Ads to expand your reach further, and keep up a consistent rhythm of posting valuable content. With the right strategies, it’s possible to make Twitter a powerful part of your brand’s content marketing. These will get you started.

Want to learn more strategies like how to get Twitter followers, how to build a brand, or how to rock other social media marketing platforms? Explore our Twitter Marketing Course here and see what's right for you.

Jonathon Tanner

Co-CEO and Co-Founder

Co-CEO and Co-Founder of SMC, earned Social Media Educator of the Year from SMMI. With vast experience in social media strategy and content marketing, he's also a co-founder of other businesses. Specialising in growth strategy, Jon has a background in management consulting specialising in M&A.