Jun 15, 2011
Have you ever tried to grow your Twitter account’s following, only to find yourself stumped by the limitations of that mysterious ratio by which Twitter arrives at the maximum number of people you can follow yourself? If so, you’re not alone. It’s very frustrating to reach a cap and not be able to leap past that unknown hurdle (no one knows for sure how the ratio is calculated, but it is suspected that you can only follow the amount of followers you have, plus 10% more.) And yet, millions are clearly able to get past these limitations. But how?
The only way to accomplish this is to attack it from a genuinely organic standpoint. The Twitter superstars who seem to rise the top effortlessly are usually brands that are so well known, they speak for themselves. People follow them because they already know all about them, use their products or services, and want to be seen following a winning company or person. In order for less well known brands and entities to attain this measure of success, it takes a lot of time and attention developing a following, nurturing relationships with other Twitter users, and following and posting useful Tweets on a regular basis. In other words, if you don’t give people something worthwhile to read, why should you expect anyone to follow you? For example, if you’re ADT, you don’t want to blab every day about how you can help your followers get home security. You want to talk about home safe, crime stats, etc.
Social networking involves relationships, and the first chance you have to impress someone is when they arrive at your Twitter page for that first look. If they get there and see:
- you have not bothered to customize your page with your company logo or picture
- you have no tweets
- you don’t follow anyone
- no one else is following you
then there is a high probability they will simply leave your page without reading your tweets, re-tweeting them, or even following you.
If, however, you take this good advice and follow these simple steps, you will eventually grow your Twitter following and break free of the limitations of how many people you can follow:
- post interesting tweets everyday
- catch the attention of your audience by not being boring
- do pay attention to trending topics and categories, and join in
- re-tweet valuable content that you think your audience would enjoy reading
- follow only those people whom it would benefit you to follow
- once you find your purpose, be consistent
With these tips, you can organically grow your Twitter following and expand your ability to follow more relevant people. This will ultimately increase brand awareness, build on your reputation, and bolster your ranking ability in the major search engines as well.
