You have been tweeting for the last few years, and still, with that level of experience and exposure, you have managed to convince not more than a hundred followers to trust you well enough to follow you.What a success? Congratulation!
Here is the thing, if you are tired of being average Joe on twitter, or of seeing other people crush in it with multitude of followers and wondering, “why not me? What is it that they do that I don’t?” Well, I have got good news for you.
As a twitter user and being in the situation you are currently in, it is natural to ask
How do I harness the power of twitter?
How do I generate a twitter traffic and a more engaging one?
And for that reason, here is a few bolts and nuts to help you answer the above questions and at the same time help you build a twitter community that is more vibrant and up to pace.
Use Images
Do yourself a favor, stop thinking twitter as a text only platform, and embrace the power of accompanying relevant stunning pictures to your tweets. This will not only make your tweets more appealing and informative, but it will also make your tweets stand out amongst your followers text-dominated twitter streams.
Also is key to note that, when choosing photos for your tweets, choose photos with strong focal points since they draw eye of the viewer to one particular point.
Studies shows that tweets with image links get two time the engagement of those without.
Tease Your Followers
Don’t say it all when tweeting a link, because when you give too much away about the content in the body of your tweet, your followers will not have a reason to open your link and your tweet will end being buried.
Instead, generate a curiosity by highlighting the benefits of the content in your tweet and don’t give aa room for your readers to guess what is in the link.
One way of doing that is asking a question that begs for an answer.
Use Light Words
It is hard to impress people this days, so stop trying to impress them with heavy complicated words on your tweets. Twitter users, same as with other social media users, don’t have time. And it is not good to waste the little that they have by sending them to dictionaries or asking themselves questions, which can’t anyway.
For the good of all us, use simple understandable words, and we will follow you.
Don’t Use All Your 140 Characters
Yes, use short precise tweets that range between 120 – 130 characters. Study shows that tweets between those characters, receive the highest click through rates (CTRs). This helps your tweets to earn more retweets and in return award you with more followers.
Retweet Your Old Tweets
It is often boring to keep updating the same thing over and over in social media. But truth be told, updates are easily missed on twitter, and if you have tweets with links that you think didn’t earn much attention like they deserved, don’t be ashamed to bring them back.
But this time be more creative and alter the images and texts used in the earlier tweet to give them a breath of freshness.
You can tweet a link three times using different content:
- Original headline, a link and a photo.
- A quote and a link of the article.
- Different photo, a link and a question that creates curiosity.
Another thing you should know is that, you should post them at different time of the day for maximum visibility, which you can easily do by using Twitter scheduling tools like Hotsuite or Buffer to schedule your tweets.
Listen To Your Audience
The best way to have your followers cling on to your handle is by giving them what they want. If you understand your audience and what they want, you have half won the fight of gaining more followers. And how do you do that? Apart from observing, you can easily pause questions and poll your twitter audience by asking them what type of issues they typically face and want address.
Then address those issues and mention those who had suggest them. It is a matter of give and take.
Adopt 80/20 Rule
If you are not familiar with this rule, it is a rule that says that 80% your tweets should be a highlight of the content of others (plus their mentions), and 20% tweets that promote your own content.
Once your audience and fellow Twitter users in your extended network get used to you sharing valuable content sourced from their community, they are more likely to engage with your content when you tweet it.
Use Hashtags
Hashtags can be easily ignored, but tweets with hashtags, receive two time more engagement than those without. And the more the engagement with your tweets the more visibility they get and the more clicks your links receive.
Use hashtags related to the subjects of your posts so users searching for your expertise on twitter can easily find your tweets.
Use the following methods to come up with hashtags
- Brainstorm possible hashtags for your tweet then find which are most popular using the search function on Com
- Pay attention to the hashtags influencers in your niche are already using for similar topics.
- Find any relevant trending hashtag using WhatTheTrend
And again be consistent with your hashtags to familiarize your twitter community with set of hashtags for particular topics.
Be Interactive
Social networks are made successful by people. And therefore it is good to show your human side and engage more with them. Interact with people online the same way you would offline.
The easiest way to do this is by sharing your interests, likes, personality and humor mixed with your professional content. And share a variety of insights on what you know and love to help others learn more about you as a real person.
Now armed with that information, I believe you can chill and watch your twitter community grow tenfold, while at same time you get uplifted from being a minnow to a big fish in the limitless social world.
Written and submitted by Derrick Mwangi.
