10 ways to grow your Twitter influence

On By mattroyseIn Social Media

How do you grow your followers and influence on Twitter? This one of the top questions many brands, organizations, and individuals are trying to answer.

BuzzSumo has created a popular tool by providing insights into the most popular content and the influencers sharing it. However, judging a person’s true level of influence is tough to define.

With so many tweets a day, what does influence really means on Twitter? It is that your followers respond to your tweets, favorite them, and retweet them to their followers.

How to grow your Twitter influence

Here are some ways that you can help boost your ranking on this social media platform and grow your Twitter influence.

1. Think like a reporter or a copy editor

With a limited amount of characters, every word, space, and punctuation counts on Twitter. Make sure each tweet is so compelling that your followers will stop to read what you have to say in the crowded and noisy Twitter universe.

Pro tip: Make your Twitter bio stand out.

2. Content is king, especially content with images

Make sure you have content that is worth posting and that engages your followers and prospective followers. And make sure it is visual.

Pro tip: Visual content receives 94% more views than text-only content.

3. Be generous

Engage with other tweeters by re-tweeting and liking content that you find interesting. Think of your tweets as your online journal you can reference at a later date. It is easy to retweet tweets that you like of others (and you’ll have those tweets in your stream for future reference). Not only are you helping yourself, you are spreading the word for others.

Pro tip: People’s tweets that you retweet and like will be more likely to follow you back and spread the word about you.

4. Be a resource for others

Add value to each tweet or retweet. If you are in the Twitter application, you can now retweet with a comment. Make sure that when you are tweeting, you treat each one like an email. Sending too many emails decreases your credibility.

Pro tip: When you have something to say, your followers think it’s worthwhile.

5. Take Twitter offline

Arrange for a phone call or coffee meeting with interesting tweeters that you follow.

Pro tip: Attend or create a Tweet-up in your area.

6. Listen

Read your followers’ tweets and follow the most popular hashtags. You can see what’s happening now on Twitter. Follow hashtags like #socialmedia and #followfriday or #ff and industry hashtags that affect your job or interests like #PR or #marketing.

Pro tip: Check out hashtags.org and you can see what is trending on Twitter. It also tracks the most popular hashtags on Twitter and provides details about those hashtags.

7. Be relevant

Link to articles or post something that is new and newsworthy.

Pro tip: Make sure you shorten your URLs on Twitter so you can better track shares.

8. Quality over quantity

There is a big temptation to get as many followers as possible.

Pro tip: The key is to have a quality following over a lot of followers on Twitter.

9. Patience is a virtue

A large following doesn’t occur overnight. It takes a while to build a loyal following. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your following.

Pro tip: Be persistent and continue to invest time in growing your network on Twitter.

10. Treat others as they want to be treated

It is a twist on the golden rule. Find out how your followers like to interact with others and engage with them in a similar fashion.

Pro tip: These five interactions will help you improve your following on social media.

What tips would you add to this list?

What are some others ways you can grow your influence on Twitter? Are their certain things you have done on Twitter to be successful?

19 thoughts on “10 ways to grow your Twitter influence”

  2. Matt,

    I love this article. It was tweeted by Mark Ragan at Ragan Communications. So, I’m now “retweeting” it!

    I felt the article gave great perspective on having quality followers rather than quantity. I get so annoyed by people that tweet that just want to sell something.

    Thanks!
    Krista

  5. mattroyse

    Thank you for sharing Karen. Twitter Grader is indeed a great resource to measure how you are doing on Twitter. I would suggest reading: “Got Twitter Clout? New Tools Rate You” http://ow.ly/XVwi for more online Twitter rating tools.

  7. mattroyse

    I am glad to hear that you liked the blog post, especially #10. I learned about this rule in my MBA course and I thought it fit well here. Thank you reading and commenting.

  8. mattroyse

    Good point but if you read “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations” by Brian Solis, he says you should stay away from calling it an “audience” per say. You should check out the book, if you haven’t already. Thank you for reading and commenting.

  9. mattroyse

    Thank you Jennifer. I am glad that you enjoyed this post. For many, Twitter is overwhelming but it becomes easier when you use third party platforms like TweetDeck and Hootsuite.

  10. Great work here Matt. Listening, knowing when to engage, becoming a trusted resource, and being personable are some of the most important Social Media qualities one can possess to being successful. Wise words sir.

  12. Good collection of information..!

    I came across many, even some of my friends – never put RT while doing re-tweet. They like to show that they only got that information.

    On man – stop doing like this – give credit to the original tweets.!

  14. justinarium

    Matt,

    Thanks for the email and thanks for the post. I can see now why you’re being spread on the Web.

    I would agree with you and Adrian that influence is not by the number of followers, but the level of engagement produced by a brand’s quality content.

    Finally, I’ve noticed some clients want to leverage twitter into thier social media landscape, yet not sure if influence is a quantitative or qualitative measurement. I’d be interested in reading more on how Edelman “measures” trust, engagement and quality to develop that influence ratio.

    Keep up the good posts!

  15. Great advice. I have to mention just one thing, your influence is not measured by the number of followers. If people who follow you are not relevant for your brand (see the companies the promise thousands of followers for money) your influence is zero. If you want quantify in a better and more complex way your influence I suggest to use twitter grader, a free tool from Hubspot (http://twitter.grader.com/)

  16. Matthew,

    It is refreshing to have a colleague promote applying the basics of effective communication to Twitter posts. Let’s hope those who tweet irrelevant trivia about their lives take your advice to heart and offer something meaningful.

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