5 Techniques to get you followed back on Twitter
- By Briana Bragg
Twitter is nothing more than an online relationship building platform. While some have turned it into the place they tell their life story and every action throughout the day – that type of use is not the reason Twitter was developed. It never fails when I give a presentation someone will say to me “I don’t want to know what others are doing every second of every day, therefore I don’t use Twitter”.
Let’s face it there are some types of people in this world who will always share their entire life on social media platforms. those are not the types of social media users you want to fill your network with. Neither are the ones who sell, sell, sell. Fill your network with Quality not Quantity.
So you have chosen who to follow and now you want them to follow you back?
Below are Five ways to get your network to follow you back:
- Be relationship focused: It’s the story of the guy (or gal) at the Chamber of Commerce networking event, you know the one we all dislike.. the one who throws their business card at everyone at the event within the first hour and then leaves. They don’t know what you do, they will never remember you and if you gave them your card in exchange you will probably end up on some email list, when you didn’t want to receive their information anyways. Same with Twitter – don’t throw your business card at everyone be on Twitter to build relationships.
- Stop Selling Your Product: No one likes a pushy salesman, so don’t be one on Twitter. The “deal based tweet” is ok occasionally however when it’s all you post… well people will unfollow you to keep from receiving “The Pitch”.
- Recognize your Twitter Followers with #FF: Follow Friday was created for a reason… to recognize those within your network who you want to drive traffic and new fans to. It is a way to give your Twitter peeps some love and recognize them for tweeting you, being in your network and most importantly building a relationship with you or your business.
- Send purposeful DM’s: Ever receive those automated Direct Messages on Twitter with “The Pitch” or “The Deal” you can’t live without? STOP! DM’s are for contacting a ‘follower’ without being public about it.. It’s a great way to build and strengthen a Twitter relationship when it is meaningful and for a purpose. Ex. Loved your blog would like to link ours together…
- Start a Conversation with people you follow: The best way we have found to get people who we follow to follow us back is to begin a conversation – this is done through re-tweeting their tweets, mentioning them in our tweets, reading their articles and giving them a shout-out about it, etc.
Twitter is a great way to build a relationship with 140 characters or less, but you must do it the right way to see the return. Twitter is not a quick hit it and quit it strategy. Active Twitter users typically follow who they want to and unfollow those who are spamming them and/or who are selling them.
If you want to generate a network of people who will follow you back, take the time to build a relationship with them, and over time you will see a great return on your social media investment. In less than 6 months a client of ours was getting international business from their Twitter followers by using the methods above. It works if you are willing to make the commitment.
