I was recently asked about my strategies for getting more followers on Twitter. I’ll give you my best guess as to why I have close to 6,000. It is definitely a combination of things.
- I have always tried to be active on Twitter & to tweet regularly. Even if it is only 5-10 minutes a few times a week.
- I try to share at least one link per day that people might find useful.
- I often retweet at around 2:00 am (Seoul time) so that I maintain contact with my western hemisphere PLN.
- When there is a conference that interests me I usually follow and participate in the feed.
- I try to RT useful tweets, but I always check the link before retweeting. I don’t RT just to have more tweets or contact with anyone. I only do it if I feel it is quality stuff.
- I thank people for retweeting me.
- I answer people who contact me & try to help if they ask.
- I keep my tweets professional, even though that becomes more challenging the better I know people.
- I direct message the more personal stuff, or things that aren’t of interest to more than a few.
I don’t know if it has had an effect on my increase in followers, but I unfollow inactive people or those who tweet too much non-ed stuff. Also, for the most part I only follow people who are working in ed tech, people with a specialty I’m interested in (fantasy football, app creation, or FCP, for example), or people who I know personally.
Honestly, I don’t do any of this to get more followers, it is just how I like to use Twitter. I think that momentum is a big factor in gaining followers. Once I hit 4,000 followers, I noticed that my number of new followers each day was increasing. Twitter Counter is great for tracking followers.
I started tweeting in 2007. Follow me.
If you are someone just starting with Twitter, I recommend you take a look at this outstanding iBook by Jabiz Raisdana & Keri-Lee Beasley.