10 Ways to Grow a Huge Following on Twitter Twitter is much more dynamic than the 140 characters most people limit themselves to.
By Christina Baldassarre Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
With 100 million daily active users and its professional look, Twitter has become one of the go-to platforms for personal and corporate branding. The social network giant has recently launched group direct messages as well as native video sharing and editing. It is time for Twitter users to catch up with how to get the most out of Twitter before they find themselves stuck with the average 208 followers.
Here are 10 common Twitter mistakes and what to do instead.
1. Embed SlideShare presentations.
SlideShare Presentations are one of the best ways to share promotions, discounts or other information about your company on Twitter. They look beautiful, take up just the right amount to get attention and can be browsed right within the tweet. To make sure your SlideShare presentation is a success, use font sizes of 30 pts or larger and use plenty of images.
Related: How I Went From Zero to 380,000 Twitter Followers Without Spending a Dime
2. Check who unfollows you.
Who follows you is equally important to who unfollows you. Once someone decided to follow you, they do not follow you forever. As a matter of fact, most people are rather picky about who they follow and you might overlook an unfollowing pattern of tweeters who would retweet your content or simply become a devoted fan of your brand.
3. Use Twitter's free analytics.
Twitter provides analytics for every twitter account for free. Review the number of impressions your tweets had, how many people took action (e.g. favorites, retweets, clicks, replies), how many people unfollowed or followed you and what your followers are like (gender, interests) among other things.
4. Create a custom hashtag.
Most startups and small businesses do not have custom hashtags because they are afraid they would be the only ones using them. To encourage more people to use your hashtag, you could make it more general. For instance, a bakery could have the hashtag #nocrumbsleft. Additionally, hashtags are searchable on Bing and can keep track of who talks about your company.
5. Share photo collages.
Sharing the occasional photo of you at an important event is great. Sharing it always in the same format is not. To create a photo collage, simply add the first photo to a tweet as if you were to share just one. Then click the same icon again and add more photos. Twitter will create the collage automatically once the tweet is published.
Related: 10 Tips for Mastering Twitter
6. Stop sharing Instagram links.
Twitter prefers you to share photos via Twitter instead of Instagram. If you prefer the look of your Instagram photos, share them from the photo folder on your smartphone where all Instagram photos are automatically saved. It will look like you uploaded it with Twitter and have the Instagram look without the unwanted Instagram photo link in the tweet.
7. Make sure your tweeted gifs are moving happily.
Gif is an image file format that supports static images and animated images (the latter are the ones you want). Animated gifs do not move in Twitter unless the tweet containing the gif is pinned to the top. If you have never used gifs, consider thanking followers for their support with a wagging puppy tail gif from a free gif website.
8. Follow for favorites and retweets.
Chances are that the people who favorite and retweet your tweets might become loyal followers in the future. If you give them the chance that is. Follow people who favorite and retweet your tweets and check if they are following you back. Most of them will and it is a quick way to grow your followers.
9. Attach the featured image of blog posts.
Instead of sharing the title of the article and the link, take a screenshot of the featured image and attach it to the tweet. It will take up significantly more space in people's timelines and therefore get more clicks. Furthermore, nicely designed featured image or eye-catching photo frequently gets favorited before it is even clicked.
10. Tag photos.
Following the previous point, featured images of blog posts should be tagged with the respective blogger or publishing platform. Other photos could be tagged with the Twitter account of the city where the photo has been taken or with the Twitter account of the host for the event you are attending. Tagging companies or fellow professionals shows other Twitter users that you are well connected, interested in interaction and not self-centered.
Related: 9 Advanced Twitter Tips and Tricks
