How to Twitter? To "tweet" is easy. To be heard is another matter. Simply opening a Twitter account won't guarantee anything. It takes a thoughtful and committed approach to get more followers.
The goal of Twitter for business is to collect a group of people interested in your message – your products, cause or opinion.
3 Ways to Build a Twitter Following:
1) Tweet and Follow
Create compelling and regular content, and people will follow you. Searches for content usually are by one of the three following criteria:
- Profile keywords
- Location of tweeter
- Content of tweets
But to grow with any speed, you'll need to market outside of Twitter. Some of my favorite tweeters have just a few hundred followers – and they are putting out great stuff. And others with tens of thousands of followers just tweet useless nonsense, such as: "Just reading the news" and "Just arrived at the coffee shop".
Links to articles and reports – both yours and other great sources make for great tweets. Point your followers in the right direction and they'll remain loyal readers. What's interesting is that often these great sources of information don't have very many followers.
The bottom line: Although it’s a good start, having good content isn't enough.
2) Market Your Account
It should go without saying that you'll need a little marketing. How else will your clients and like-minded people know about your account?
Consider listing your Twitter link/username on your:
- website (each page, with a little twitter icon is best)
- blog (see above)
- email signature
- business card
- other social networks
This isn't rocket science. If you want people to know something, you need to tell them about it. It's that simple. People are eager to follow great content sources. Be sure to tell people how to find you.
3) Automate the Process
A number of tools exist to accelerate the growth process. TweetAdder or TweetAttacks both offer automated management and growth of your account. They can let thousands of people know about you, and build a responsive and large following in a relatively short period of time. But automation can be risky.
