HOW-TO: FIVE WAYS TO GAIN MORE TWITTER TRAFFIC
I was once coined a Social Media Maven; whether I should have went to the extreme of changing my LinkedIn title to that (which I did temporarily) is questionable. As time passed, I realized one of the only social media platforms, aside from Pinterest, that I had never fully utilized was Twitter.
If you are trying to impress investors or gain more traction, you must boost your social presence. Increase your following; it is generally believed that the largest gathering equates to a higher social standing, which can potentially lead to curious investors taking a peek and being swayed by your gathering. The bottom-line is that this is networking. Although this does not sound validating, in a world where there is a ranked list for everything, we’re here to assist you in gaining followers the honest way.
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1) Build Your Basics: Profile Pics, Bios, and Tag lines
The biggest mistake is weak fundamentals such as profile photos, short bios, and taglines. Having a profile picture dismisses the possibility of your onlooker thinking you are a spam-bot, or a total internet newbie. Avoid the faceless default icon and choose a flattering photo: balance the impersonal-professional with the personal-private boundary. Create an interesting tagline. Whether it is for your own personal rant column or for your business, a generic tagline will make prospective followers miss out on your wit. They snooze, you lose. Fill out your bio, engage lingering Twitter prospects. Plus, Twitter will not include you in search results unless you fill out your “personal information” (full name, bio…etc.).
2) Open Up and Share
Do not privatize your Twitter account. Make it easy for people to follow you: display links to your Twitter account in your email signature, website, and business cards, and link your page to your other social networking platforms. If someone is already drawn to you, your best bet is to have them follow you on all your outlooks.
Create valuable content, point people to helpful resources, and be generous. Use generated trackable links (like Bit.ly) to measure engagement levels on certain short-links. Be smart: create “tweet-able” content and promote them on networks that you know will go viral amongst your friends and peers.
3) Be Active but Not as a Spammer
During NYFW, I wrote a post commenting on the needless torment that is rapid-firing. TL;DR: Don’t flood your followers’ Twitter feeds with repetitiveness just for the sake of posting. Keep your followers engaged, but don’t come off as a spammer.
Leave room for comments. Retweets are the only way to get noticed by people who don’t follow you, so keep your tweets short enough for people to add the “RT” symbol and your username (“RT: @fashionboss”).
4) Interact with Your Fellow Tweeters
Join in the conversation! You will never know who replies, or retweets, your messages. Twitter is a social scene where eavesdropping is acceptable; therefore joining multiple conversations is not stigmatized. Replying publicly will be sociable.
Retweets are viral gold. Twitter can spread news in seconds, it takes very little time to tweet 140 characters to get a headliner from coast to coast. Be crafty with your Tweets: think “is this what I want hundreds of people liking and re-tweeting?”
Cross-pollinate between those followers on your other social media platforms and your Twitter followers to maximize the return on the time you’re investing in social media. Celebrities like it, because they can avoid the pitfalls of the traditional media outlets and deliver information straight from the horse’s mouth. As can you.
5) Find Your Niche
Someone out there shares the same interest as you. Perhaps thousands of people do. Don’t be afraid to delve further into that field. You could be contributing greatly to that audience, or niche, and become relevant to many.
Tweet at peak times! Most people hunt for new followers during business hours in the USA, or during commuting hours. The Twittersphere activity apex is early in the morning or after work hours.
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Manage your time wisely. Don’t neglect your other social networks and/or personal blog to concentrate solely on Twitter. You catch more fish with a wider net, so quality control should be implemented on all platforms.
Don’t try to cheat the system with bot-followers. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Unless you are a celebrity or entrepreneur who has built a vast audience in some other media channel, attracting followers will take time and effort. Let’s not degrade the Twitter experience. The nature of these programs is to rely on “aggressive following” and the “follower churn” shortly after. If you don’t follow back, you get dumped. Womp.
