By Joseph J. Sanchez (Social Media Manager)
Welcome to my post about Twitter! This is the obligatory introduction where I write that you could buy 5,000 followers for $5.00, but you’re better off earning 50 followers who will actually engage with you.
This is the jaw-dropping line that follows my introduction, in which I quote Guy Kawasaki and remind you that, “There are only two kinds of Twitter users: those that want more followers and those that lie.”
Then, in a surprise twist, a member of our live studio audience raises their hand. “Is your number of followers really that important?” they ask, a glimmer of skepticism lurking behind their squinted eyes.
“Yes and no,” I reply, pausing for dramatic effect.
While striking a power pose so powerful that Amy Cuddy has yet to even contemplate it, I begin to explain Social Proof – our tendency to follow the actions of others, particularly in times of uncertainty.
“Therefore, if you have more followers,” I elaborate. “People are more likely to trust your worth and legitimacy, and because of this, they’re more likely to follow you. It’s the circle of (social media) life.”
MORE FOLLOWERS = PERCEPTION OF AUTHORITY + MORE INFLUENCE
The equation above flashes onto a screen behind me. You “ooh” and “ah” without questioning the mathematical integrity of this statement!
Before you have time to catch your breath, I hammer home the importance of organic growth, delivering each word in a staccato manner that suggests there’s a hand-clap emoji between each syllable.
“Buying followers will threaten the legitimacy and worth you’re working so hard to gain,” I continue, with a fiery intensity surging through my vocal cords. “You can have a billion followers, and it will mean literally nothing if they’re not engaging with your content.”
The room goes silent. The silence lingers. And lingers.
The lingering comes to an end when one brave soul raises their hand to ask how they can increase both engagement and their number of followers.
“I’m so glad you asked,” I respond, without missing a single beat.
After a quick twirl and a back flip, I begin to unveil 10 easy tips to achieve this seemingly impossible mission.
1. KNOW YOUR VOICE:
This begins with knowing your audience. Who are you trying to reach, and what action (if any) do you want them to take? If you have a clear answer to this question – and as a brand, you definitely should – then your voice should be shaped to support these goals.
But for the sake of time, let’s operate under the assumption that you’ve already defined your voice! Then you’ve already succeeded at this step, because regardless of what you’ve been told in the past, there is not some grand secret for bringing your voice into the Twitter universe.
Your voice is, well, your voice. Embrace who you already are.
We’re not all going to be as hilarious, random and pancake-centric as Denny’s. We can’t all replicate the success of Oreo‘s iconic Super Bowl blackout tweet. And much as we might try, none of us will ever reach the level of poetic, emoji-laden artistry demonstrated on Cher‘s account.
And frankly? We shouldn’t be trying to do any of that nonsense! Whether you’re tweeting as an individual, brand, publication or celebrity puppet, the best game plan is to stay true to your own damn voice. Inject that voice with creativity, simplicity and a healthy dash of humanity, and maybe one day, you’ll be on a list like this.
(Though it’ll probably help your chances if you read the rest of this post!)
2. LET’S GET VISUAL:
You never know who’s watching at the office. #WilsonWilson #HomeImprovement pic.twitter.com/tYPAWkZYDC
— Wilde Agency (@Wilde_Agency) December 21, 2015
A (good) picture says a thousand words. There are some pretty remarkable stats about the power of visual content. I’m not going to bore you by drowning you in a bunch of numbers, but I will shamelessly and lazily quote what our President John Sisson had to say in a recent post entitled “Should Your Brand Be Using Infographics?”
“Vision and processing visual information make up a large portion of our brain activity. Our minds deal mainly with pictorial, not textual data. Reading and writing are skills learned later in life, whereas we deal with pictures from birth.”
I’m inclined to agree with John – not just because he’s my boss, but because I’ve seen proof that this holds up in practice. After introducing a more aggressive visual approach in December 2015, Wilde Agency‘s Twitter account had a 41% increase in followers, a 160% boost in impressions and a whopping 272% jump in profile views.
On top of that? More people were clicking through to our content and, even better, interacting with it. 
When you select the right image, it jumps out on your followers’ feeds. This is especially important on Twitter, where we’re all left swimming in an endless sea of text, links and hashtags.
Need ideas on the types of images you can share? Look no further than Aman Thakur’s “9 Eye-Popping Visuals To Attract More Social Shares“. Experiment with a variety of approaches, and keep track of what works (and what doesn’t)… And remember, a good images is only as good as the content it supports!
3. DEVELOP A CONSISTENT ROUTINE:
How often should you tweet? The answer isn’t the same for everyone. On the Wilde Agency account, we aim to post (or schedule) tweets for every hour between standard 9-5 business hours.
There is, however, some benefit to posting outside of this window of time – less competition on your followers’ feeds and the ability to reach people in different time zones.
Twitter never sleeps, but your audience does! Tweet when they’re awake.
Try not to disappear over weekends. This is an ideal time to repurpose high-performing content your followers may have missed, or schedule a few links that are just for fun.
It’s okay, and perhaps ideal, if you cut your output by a third. This should be enough to keep your impressions up, so you’re not left rebuilding your empire the following Monday.
Consistency also extends to the type of content you’re sharing. Keep it as focused as possible, and unless it makes sense for your brand, avoid taking strong stances on topics that may be divisive like religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin.
4. ACTUALLY TALK TO PEOPLE:
@JJS_III @Wilde_Agency And these were among the best interview questions I’ve been asked in a while! #FF — CB Whittemore (@CBWhittemore) March 18, 2016
It’s called social media for a reason! This sentence has been written so many times that it’s essentially become a cliché within the #SocialMediaMarketing world… And yet, I wouldn’t be repeating it for the 10,000,000th time if it weren’t 10,000,000 percent true. (Slight exaggeration.)
Too often, people treat Twitter as their own personal soap box, shouting their thoughts out into the world with complete disregard for the people who may be listening, sharing and retweeting.
That’s fine and all! There are worse crimes in the world, but you’re going to get so much more out of the platform when you interact with the people you follow.
To get engagement, you need to engage. Period.
Keep an eye on your notifications tab. If someone mentions you, shoot back a quick response to keep the conversation going. You can, naturally, give yourself some leeway here. Feel free to ignore suspicious spammers or misguided sales pitches in favor of real, actual human beings.
When appropriate, show gratitude to anyone who’s shared your content. A simple “thank you” reply is often enough, but hey, why not succumb to the Reciprocity Principle by retweeting or sharing some of their content? This will not go unnoticed, because duh, people like being noticed.
5. AVOID SPAMMING PEOPLE:
There is an art to the automated direct message. Unfortunately, most people have not mastered it, so we’re all greeted by awkward invitations to connect on LinkedIn, links to random websites and seemingly innocent conversation starters that are not-so-subtly headed toward a sales pitch.
Look, I get it! You have to grow your professional network, increase traffic to your site and make those sales to get a paycheck. Automation is an effective way to accomplish these goals, even if you only get a small percentage of people to respond to your call to action.
But let’s keep some rules in mind – 1) You need to be creative and make your message stand out from the rest of the crap out there, 2) Don’t overwhelm your recipient with an excessive amount of links, and 3) Most importantly, take some time to actually write back to anyone who responds to your message.
The best automated direct message I ever received was from marketer and entrepreneur Chris Kubbernus. (For educational purposes, I’ve uploaded a full-size screenshot here.) It worked for me, because – 1) He refreshingly owned up to the robotic nature of his gesture, 2) He only included a link to his Instagram account, and 3) He reacted to my feeble attempt at conversation and sent me a fist bump emoji.
Sometimes, all it takes is a fist bump emoji to rise above the robots and emphasize that you are a living, breathing human who genuinely wants to help your followers. One quick, tiny gesture can place a positive memory inside your follower’s brain, and here’s the extra fun part – when you win someone over with your conversational charm, there’s an even greater possibility they’ll take the action you originally requested.
6. EMBRACE THE HASHTAG:
Check out this simply great interview w/ @cbwhittemore from @wilde_agency #mpb2b #inbound https://t.co/cLpOEU9aE1 — Nancy Harhut (@nharhut) March 17, 2016
Hashtags bring people with similar interests together. It’s easy to be skeptical of them until you find one that works for you. However, once you do, you’ll notice several things happen when you use it – 1) Random people who specialize in that topic will follow you, 2) You’ll be added to Twitter lists specific to that industry, and 3) You’ll likely see a boost in impressions.
While there are exceptions to these rules, I firmly believe that you should use no more than two hashtags in any given tweet, and generally, they should appear at the end of your statement.
One is honestly enough to drive engagement (especially when you do your research and find one that works). Go for specifics, whenever possible! I’d argue that #ContentMarketing is far more powerful than #Content alone.
Always be aware of readability. Overuse of hashtags can make your output feel robotic, and much as pizza delivery robots and animatronic velociraptors are absurdly bad-ass, the truth (for now) is that most people prefer interacting with other humans on social media. This might change when the robots take over.
Oh, and while we’re talking about being human, be sure to research trending hashtags before you use them. Avoid capitalizing on tragedies, and take a moment to carefully analyze any hashtags you create for your own marketing purposes. You don’t want to end up on a list of PR disasters like these companies.
7. MAKE SURE TO MENTION:
.@EllenDes offers 5 tips for selecting visuals that pop more than THIS awful stock photo: https://t.co/GRrxIcXfks pic.twitter.com/nnWD5Qu3e5 — Wilde Agency (@Wilde_Agency) March 24, 2016
Put that “@” key to work! I cannot stress this enough. If you are talking about a person, brand or publication – especially if you’re saying something complimentary – they’re going to want to know what you’re saying. Make it easier for them by directly including their handle in your tweet. You never know who’s listening, and you never know who will like, retweet or respond to your output.
(Case in point? The tweet above reached 32 times our follower count, thanks to a retweet from author Ellen Desmarais and her company 500px.)
Do your research beforehand to ensure you’ve selected the right account. For example, if you tweeted to @wildeagency, you’d wind up chatting with a booking agency in Germany… But if you quickly searched for “Wilde Agency“, our logo, description and other context clues would help you realize that the correct handle is @Wilde_Agency.
Now, once you’ve found the right target, take a moment to consider how you want to mention them. You could drop their handle into the middle of a sentence. You could present the tweet as a quote. You could tweet directly at them for a more personal approach.
But here’s something important to remember! If you’re starting a tweet with someone’s handle – and you want all of your followers to see it – include a period before the “@” symbol like this. Otherwise, your tweet will only show up on the feeds of you, the aforementioned account and anyone who follows you both.
8. FOLLOW & FOLLOW BACK:
Though, for your own sake, don’t do the whole #TeamFollowBack thing! You’re looking for relevant Twitter followers, not useless accounts that will ignore you as soon as they click that magical button… But how, oh how, could you possibly find people, brands or publications with similar interests?
Well, if you were listening before, the answer is right in front of your nose (or it would be, if you scrolled back up to item number two on this list). Hashtags!
Click one and browse the recent tweets. If a piece of information catches your eye, head over to that user’s profile, see what else they’re sharing and make a quick snap judgment – would this person have anything to gain from your output? Even the slightest “yes” should lead to a follow. F
eeling advanced and ready to move to the next level? Then maybe you should try signing onto Crowdfire. Without dropping a dime, you can utilize the Copy Followers function to casually “borrow” followers from competitors or peers within your industry… Because if they’re following that other guy who talks about the same stuff, then they’ll probably consider following you, too.
(Don’t abuse this power! Only follow a small amount of people at once.)
Crowdfire can also be useful for “cleaning house”. Every now and then, I’ll go through our Inactive Following and Recent Unfollowers to weed out accounts that aren’t providing any value.
Under the circumstances, that you’d like to keep following someone for professional reasons – but find their tweets excessive or off-putting for whatever reason – the “Mute” option on their profile can be quite, quite handy.
9. PARTICIPATE IN TWITTER CHATS:
@Adweek A5: Two words: Snooki Slippers. Need we explain why it was dumb? #AdWeekChat pic.twitter.com/9mhH6AAm3d — Wilde Agency (@Wilde_Agency) March 16, 2016
Put aside some extra time for Twitter Chats. Thanks to, of all things, a tweet about Snooki Slippers, we witnessed a 400% increase in daily impressions last Wednesday. The tweet above took less than 30 seconds and (practically) zero brain cells to compose, and it wound up getting retweeted to Adweek‘s 488,000+ followers. The engagement rate was thirty-three times our average over the past month.
All of this happened within one single hour – every Wednesday, 2PM ET – under one single hashtag, #AdweekChat. We continued to drive impressions into overdrive by hopping onto Hootsuite’s #HootChat and Madalyn Sklar’s #TwitterSmarter the following day. In the process, we saw our follower count creeping up slowly, as we interacted with our fellow chatters.
The format for Twitter Chats is generally the same across the board. Moderators ask questions preceded by Q1, Q2, Q3 and so on, then participants respond as quickly as possible with answers preceded by A1, A2, A3 and so on.
The best way to understand Twitter Chats is to participate in one.
My process for participating in a Twitter Chat is as follows – 1) Find a marketing-related chat that’s relevant to what you do, 2) Show up at the specified time, 3) Eliminate all other distractions, 4) Keep one tab open with the moderator’s Twitter account, 5) Keep another tab open with notifications for our account, 6) Keep a third tab open for quick Google image searches, and 7) Flip between the three tabs like a maniac to refresh the page, respond to the questions posed, view other responses and embrace the “chat” aspect of the whole experience by engaging with other participants.
Quite likely, there are smarter ways to do this! (Some folks have offered heavy praise for TweetChat and similar tools.) If you’re still curious about Twitter Chats – and I’ve somehow failed to describe them properly – head over to Buffer when you’re done to read their “Twitter Chats 101” guide.
10. LIVE-TWEET EVENTS:
And be sure to use the proper hashtag! I’ve found that live-tweeting events can be a great way to connect with attendees, while also allowing followers who couldn’t attend to live vicariously through your tweets. The key is to find a balance between broadcasting and actually enjoying the experience in front of you – which, to be fair, isn’t always easy.
I’m using the word “event” loosely here. It could be something that happens offline or right on your computer screen. Whether it’s a conference, a webinar or industry award show, there’s a pretty good chance that others will be tweeting about it as well.
That’s part of the trick, too! You have to be aware of what those people are saying. Head over to the event’s hashtag to browse through their perspectives. Retweet images or comments you may have missed, or if you’re feeling more passive, simply like them with that little ol’ heart button… And, well, interact! Start a conversation, track people down and turn the online engagement into real-life engagement.
TO SUM IT ALL UP?
You should ultimately aim to bring JOY to your social media followers. The truth is, this is just a word I jotted down onto a post-it note, which hangs near my desk as a daily reminder of my purpose… But in the hopes that I’ll blow your mind and consequently secure a lucrative book deal, I’m going to pretend it stands for something.
• JAZZ IT UP WITH THREE “H” WORDS: Be helpful, be honest, and for heaven’s sake, be human.
• ORCHESTRATE AN ENGAGEMENT PLAN: Engage for the sake of engagement! You get what you give.
• YODEL FOR CONSISTENCY: Your voice, output and frequency of post should be consistent.
Okay, so this is an outright heinous acronym, but I’ve somehow managed to present the general gist of an entire 3,000+ word post in three lines! That must count for something.
If you loved this post, tweet at me to talk about it!
If you hated this post, tweet at me to talk about it!
If you just want to have a very professional conversation about bagels, stock photos or Rihanna, you are also still welcome to tweet at me to talk about it.
I love attention engagement! So let’s take some time to surprise, delight and engage one another. Let’s get social on social media.
CONSIDER ALSO READING – The Curious Science of FOMO In Marketing
The post 10 Easy Tips To Increase Engagement + Gain More Relevant Twitter Followers appeared first on Wilde Agency.
