Tag Archives: social media

Get More Twitter Followers–Part 3

Welcome to the third and final installment of my series on how I gained 5,000 Twitter followers in six months. This is the fun part—where you really get to see those numbers climb. I’ve been adding about 1,000 followers per month with this method, the vast majority of them fellow writers. Once again, I’m writing with other authors in mind, but the basic methods should carry over to any profession or interest.

Step 3—Time to Fly

Naturally, the best way to attract followers is by being so fabulous that people flock to your profile, dying to see what tidbit of brilliance you’ll post next. If you can pull that off, I tip my hat to you. But the rest of us can still gather thousands of followers without resorting to the empty numbers of #teamfollowback and its ilk. For us, the name of the game is reciprocity.

The basic approach here is simple—follow people, and most of them will follow you back. Easy, right? I’ll give you a little more to go on than that, however, addressing questions such as whom to follow, where to find them, how many people to follow at a time and how to keep your ratio of Following to Followers in balance.

Choosing People to Follow

The first thing many people do when they join Twitter is to follow their favorite celebrities. Writers might follow best-selling authors, agents and publishers. By all means, go for it—you can learn a lot this way. But don’t expect these people to follow you. Anyone who has far more Followers than Following is not likely to follow you back.

It’s not hard to find people who will, however. The Twitterverse is absolutely teeming with other authors and artists who want to build their online tribe just as badly as you do. Most of these people will follow you back, and you end up with a Followers list full of kindred spirits. You’ll probably even find a few new friends, readers and blog followers in the process. I know I have!

Where to Find Them

So where do you find these kindred spirits? Here are a few ideas:

Poach from your friends’ Followers lists. Go to a friend’s profile, click on Followers and scan through the list, clicking Follow for anyone who looks promising. This method works particularly well if your friend writes in the same genre you do.

Find other authors in your genre and go through their list. Many of my friends write romance or urban fantasy, and I wanted to connect with more middle grade fantasy authors. I scanned through the list of people who were following me, found a few in my genre and went to work. Soon, I’d connected with a whole community of middle grade authors.

Use hashtags. If you type hashtag terms in the Twitter search window, you’ll pull up all the recent posts using that hashtag. This is a great way to find others who share your particular interest. Since I’m writing a middle grade time travel story, I used #MG and #timetravel. Other good options are #author, #amwriting, #YA, #kidlit. Get creative and try different terms to see what turns up. And don’t forget to use these hashtags in your own tweets so that others can find you!

World Literary Café. You can add your link to a list of authors who want to build Twitter followers, Facebook likes and blog followers. This list is also an easy source of authors who are likely to follow you back. Go to the WLC website to sign up.

How many should I follow?

This really depends on how aggressive you want to be and how much time you have to devote. I typically follow 100-300 people at a time. Obviously, the more people you follow, the faster your following will grow. Be sure to allow time to interact with your new followers. You’ll get a flurry of welcome messages and retweets that deserve a response.

Remember to follow back!

The more your name gets out there, the more people will find and follow you. It’s only polite to follow them back. Plus, if you don’t, many of them will drop you, so if you want to keep that follower, follow them back.

You don’t need to follow everyone—I stay away from the ones that look like spam on principle—but you also don’t need to be too picky since you won’t be reading most of those tweets anyway (remember the lists we set up in Step 2?).

Don’t use TrueTwit.

If you want people to follow you, don’t create an extra step that will drive some of them away. So what if spammers follow you? Just don’t follow them back. Twitter isn’t the place for personal information you don’t want to share with the world, especially if you want to build a large following, so who cares who’s reading your tweets?

Unfollow Those Who Don’t Follow You Back

This is my final piece of advice, and it’s crucial. If you’ve followed people with interests similar to yours, most of them will follow you back, but certainly not all. If you’re actively following people as I have described, you’ll soon find you have hundreds more on your Following list than Followers. Not a good thing. In fact, Twitter won’t let you follow more than 2,000 people if your Following/Follower ratio is too far out of whack.

I like ManageFlitter for this purpose. It will show you a list of your followers who are not following you back, and you simply click the ones you want to unfollow. Quick and easy, and you’re allowed to unfollow up to one hundred people per day for free.

And there it is. The simple, common sense method I’ve used to gather 5,000 Twitter followers in six months. I hope you found some useful ideas. I’d love to hear your ideas and experiences!

Get More Twitter Followers–Part 2

18 Replies

Welcome to the second installment of my three-part series on how I gained 5,000 Twitter followers in less than six months. Last week, I offered advice on setting up an attractive profile people will want to follow. There are just a few more things you’ll want to do before you begin gathering those hordes of followers. Once again, unless you’re brand new to Twitter, you’ll already have completed some of these steps, but perhaps you’ll still find a useful idea or two.

Step 2—Get Your Feet Wet

It’s a good idea not to dive in too quickly. You need time to become familiar with Twitter etiquette and conventions, and you don’t want your ratio of Following to Followers to get too far out of whack. If people see that you’ve followed five hundred people and only fifteen have followed you back, they’ll shy away, thinking you’re a spammer. So for the first month or two, you’ll want to start slowly.

Follow your friends. The obvious place to start is with the people you already know. Very few of my personal friends are on Twitter, but most of the writers I know are. It can be tricky to search for people on Twitter, so you should get their Twitter handles if you can. If you belong to a writers’ group, they may have a list available. Post on Facebook, in Yahoo groups, etc. asking your friends for their handles and announcing yours. You can also scan through the Following/Followers lists of your friends looking for familiar names and faces.

Follow your groups. If you belong to writers’ groups, follow those next. You may find some friends you’ve missed that way, and the group may even help promote you with shout outs or Follow Friday posts.

Set up lists. This is the most important part of Step 2. You’re about to gather thousands of followers, and you better be ready! You can’t possibly keep up with all those tweets, so anyone whose tweets you don’t want to miss—friends, agents, celebrities, etc. -–need to be on a list. Preferably several, divided by category. Trying to set up these lists after the fact can be frustrating and time consuming, so it’s best to have the framework in place before your followers become overwhelming. Add important people to the proper lists as you follow them, and you’ll be ahead of the game. I have several lists, some of which are small enough for me to read every tweet, and others that I only scan from time to time. Combined, they let me stay connected without drowning in the endless sea of tweets.

Some people love HootSuite or other third party apps for organizing their Twitter followers. Personally, I’ve been satisfied with the list feature within Twitter, so I haven’t experimented elsewhere. Setting up lists is easy. Click on the name of the person you want to add. Beneath their bio, you will see a head-and-shoulders icon with an arrow. Click on that icon, and you will get a menu that includes “Add or remove from lists . . .” Now simply click the list you want to add that person to, or click “Create a list” to add a new category. Easy peasy.

Once you’ve gathered a base of followers from your friends and colleagues and set up lists to organize all those tweets, you’re ready to begin adding serious numbers. Come back next week for Step 3—Time to Fly.

Get More Twitter Followers–Part 1

27 Replies

Several people have asked me how I’ve gained so many Twitter followers since deciding to dive into the Twitterverse six months ago. My standard answer has been, “I followed people, and most of them followed me back.” It really was more complicated than that, though, so in honor of reaching 5,000 followers, I’m addressing the question in a series of three posts. This advice is geared toward writers, but many of the principles will remain the same whatever your field. Unless you’re brand new to Twitter, you will have already completed some of these steps, but perhaps you’ll still find some helpful ideas.

Step 1–Set the Stage

Create a profile people will want to follow. This is your first impression, so make it a good one, using a carefully crafted bio, a great photo and background images that reflect your writing style. You can see what I’ve done at @sdkeeling.

Bio—Ask yourself, why would people be interested in you? Who are you trying to connect with? You can’t capture your entire personality in 160 characters, so showcase interests you share with the people you most want to attract.

Be specific! It helps you stand out and find others with like interests. Don’t just say you’re a writer, tell us what you’re writing. Give the genre rather than the title. Titles often convey little information for someone who’s not familiar with your writing.

Use hashtags so that people can find you when they search for certain terms, like the subject or genre of your book.

Fill in your location. I’ve made friends on Twitter from the opposite side of the world, but it grabs my attention when I see another writer who lives nearby.

Don’t forget your website! People often click through to learn more about you. You can give a link to your Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon—just give them somewhere to go!

Photo—Don’t be an egg. Any photo is better than no photo, but it’s worth taking some time to choose the right one. This is a big part of your first impression, so think about the image you want to project—Professional? Friendly? Funny? Sexy? Edgy?

Seriously consider having a professional photographer create a headshot for you. You may be able to do this inexpensively at a writers’ convention, such as the Ozarks Romance Authors conference. A classic piece of career advice is to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. That applies here as well. Successful agents and authors tend to use professional images to add polish to their presentation. If you want to look like you belong in that crowd, hire a professional photographer and dress for success.

Background Images—A custom header and background image can really make your profile stand out and contribute to your branding.

Published authors tend to incorporate their book covers or other artwork related to their books. I used images from my trip to Egypt, along with a little creative Photoshop work, to create an ancient Egyptian atmosphere to represent my time travel adventure novel.

Pay attention to design details. I gave a single warm brown tone to both my header and background images, creating a harmonious look that sets a mood without being visually cluttered. Be careful that your header does not interfere with the readability of your bio text, and that important parts of the image are not hidden behind your photo. You may want to enlist the help of a friend who is talented at graphic design, or hire someone from Fiverr to help you out.

It can take some time to get your profile just right, but it’s worth the effort. After all, you never know when a fellow writer, agent or future reader might be taking a look.

Come back next week for Step 2–Getting Your Feet Wet!