Twitter can be an incredibly useful tool for businesses, as well as a fun way to follow friends, brands, and celebrities. The format of providing short, impactful tweets, viral content, and breaking news is perfect for a lot of social media users.
For brands and influencers, it is possible to build up a large following on Twitter and create your own platform, or even drive traffic to your own website. Some people even sell through their Twitter.
The platform has been around for a surprisingly long time (15 years now), and while it has gone through many iterations, the user base has continued to grow. Twitter offers a unique take and method of interaction that a lot of other social media sites just haven’t been able to replicate.
For brands, it can be a great way to engage with customers and grow your fanbase. You may even be surprised that it is relatively cheap and easily possible to buy Twitter likes that come from actual real profiles and not “bot” accounts.
Why is Twitter So Popular?
Some of the reasons why Twitter is becoming so popular include:
- Its unique format. Twitter’s competitors haven’t really been able to grab people with a limited character format in the same way. It keeps messages and tweets pretty short and snappy, and they fit neatly on a feed from your favorite accounts.
- It’s in the news. Twitter is continuing to grow because it is mentioned in the news a lot, especially at the moment, as it is the subject of a takeover proposal from Elon Musk.
- News breaks on Twitter. Even before people can get news from news websites and channels, it is found on Twitter. Live coverage from events, photos from the scene of a news event, it is all being shared on the platform and it is relatively easy to find using the right hashtags.
- Celebrities. This is a huge draw for a lot of people, as Twitter gives a really intriguing insight into the life of celebs and allows the audience to follow their favorite actors, musicians, politicians, and sports stars.
- A very clever algorithm. Twitter has become very good at showing people things they are actually interested in, rather than just random content that the users they’re following have shared about what they had for lunch. The algorithms can work out what sort of content is most interesting to the audience, and show them more of that kind of post.
Of course, these are just some of the reasons. The social element and opportunity to interact (and tag your friends in funny memes) helps to make Twitter even more of a runaway freight train of popularity.
How to Develop Your Account
So, with the popularity of Twitter in mind, how can you grow your account to the point where you can make a genuine difference or grow a brand account that helps you to promote your product or service effectively?
A lot of users on the platform are keen to expand their network and get as many followers as possible. Increasing your Twitter followers isn’t always easy, but there are some steps that you can follow to get your numbers moving in the right direction.
Be Entertaining
Let’s start with a pretty obvious one. It doesn’t matter what kind of Twitter profile you have, it helps to be entertaining in one way or another. Whether this is by sharing something interesting for people to enjoy, being funny, or just making them smile.
Look at the most popular accounts, even brand accounts, and the pattern they all tend to follow is that they are all pretty entertaining in one way or another, even in subtle ways. For instance, check out the list of accounts that the KFC Twitter account follows for a clever in-joke!
Post Niche Content
It helps if people know that the content you tweet is going to stick roughly to one niche. A lot of people might follow you for your witty insights on sports, or the fact that you have a shared interest.
By sticking to one niche (more or less) then you are likely to align better with other accounts in that niche, gain followers, and follow those accounts back. This is the way in which accounts can start to organically grow.
Being within a niche, and known in that niche, also increases the chance that you will get a lot of retweets and likes, which makes your posts more visible.
Post Engaging Content
People love to engage on Twitter. There are plenty of examples of this, including some incredibly heated and passionate debates.
Some users are cleverly using Twitter polls to garner opinion and to grow their accounts by giving users the chance to share their opinions. It also makes it more likely that those accounts will retweet in search of a bigger sample size for the poll.
Before posting anything, ask yourself what purpose it serves. Does it fit the bill of being entertaining or funny? Is it useful information for people? Be sure to add something.
Don’t Tweet Constantly
If you tweet all the time about everything, then you will find that people unfollow and you lose their attention.
The truth is that people don’t want to know what you had for breakfast unless it is really interesting. Of course, some of us just use Twitter as a sounding board to keep tweeting an account of their day, but this is a surefire way to start to annoy users.
If you are a brand, it is possible to do the same just by continually tweeting things that are promotional, or asking people to check out your new product or to buy your service. It’s a case of adding something to the conversation.
Break News and Be Fast
This is one of the best ways to get seen by new potential followers. If you can get to the news before anyone else, and be the source of this kind of information for people, then there is every chance that you can grow your list of followers pretty quickly and show up on peoples’ searches. It’s a bit like being on the first page of Google.
A great example of this includes journalist accounts. A lot of sports journalists have become “Twitter famous” by breaking news before others, and sharing exciting exclusives that sports fans will continue to share.
Use Hashtags Properly
Hashtags are not guaranteed traffic, but they are a way to enhance your reach if you use them correctly. Try to find relevant tags in your niche, and don’t spam them.
If you are able to provide interesting content, hashtags will just be a way to continue to get this content to new people, who are following what is happening on that tag. This is especially useful for events and trends, which the audience will continually check out.
Reply to People
This is definitely one of the most useful techniques while you are growing your account. Reply to people, and add something to the conversation, as this will enable you to increase the visibility of your account.
If you reply to a post that gets thousands of views, and you have something genuinely interesting to say, there is a chance that you will gain followers and likes as a result. Twitter’s algorithm will reward this, too, and show your tweet to even more users.
Conclusion
Twitter is still growing, and there are plenty of opportunities to be the next big account to go viral or to gain a new base of customers or fans from the platform. It may be a long game, and it requires some patience, but investing some time and money in the platform can help you to speed up the process somewhat, so long as the content you create is also excellent.
News Source: Apple Gazette
