Over 11,500 people search for the phrase how to get followers on twitter monthly on Google in the US alone. If you add close variations (including those around buying followers), the number exceeds 55,000. Since ~96% of all Google clicks occur on the first page, you can expect that essentially all those folks will read the same articles giving the same advice. Some of it is brilliant: “tweet more“, “use hashtags“, or “engage with your followers with retweets and replies“. But which ones of those pieces of wisdom did you not know?
Lack of original tactics of how to gain followers on Twitter, however, is excellent news for those looking to do just that. With everybody using the same techniques, thinking outside the box is key. So, instead of regurgitating the same info, this post teaches the mindset that makes acquiring Twitter followers a natural process flowing on its own.
Twitter is Made of Followers: Be a Leader Instead
“Most Twitter followers are just that.”
Danil Rudoy
Twitter followers come in all shapes and sizes, but most of them are average people who tweet occasionally but are primarily consumers of content created by others. They have their own followers, sometimes hundreds, but generally they follow more accounts than follow them back. Understanding this fact is critical, because if it applies to you it means few people consider you attention-worthy. This is fine for a life of oblivion, but since you clearly don’t want it consider this paradox:
To get more Twitter followers, you have to distinguish yourself from most Twitter followers
Which is another way of saying that you have to become a leader: someone driving conversations instead of reacting to what’s already going on. I cannot emphasize the importance of this enough: next time you open your Twitter page, you need to think like Taylor Swift, Barack Obama, Ariana Grande, or Bill Gates. And, since even the vanguard of leadership needs points of reference, read this → article to decide who to follow on Twitter.
Brand recognition beyond Twitter
If you’d come today you could have reached a whole nation.
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.“Jesus Christ Superstar”
How many followers do you think Jesus Christ would have got if he had been on Twitter? You bet millions of people would have created a Twitter account just to follow him! The same holds true not only for Buddha, the Prophet Mohammad, or Moses, but also for Shakespeare, Mozart, Dali and thousands of other historic figures who died before the Internet came around. Which brings us to modern celebrities. Despite a considerable discount on the personal magnitude, the latter illustrate the same concept of brand recognition, or fame.
Here is a thought that may seem a joke, except it ain’t. From a PR perspective, the main difference between you and Shakespeare is that nobody knows you. Forget about everything Shakespeare did and you didn’t do: if everybody starts talking about you today, there will be more searches for you on Google than for Shakespeare, which will translate into a rapidly growing fan base. This is precisely what happened to most people who have millions of followers right now. So, what you need to do is:
Gain Followers in Real Life, not on Twitter
People who have the most followers on Twitter did not gain those followers on Twitter. For them, Twitter was another reflection of the brand recognition they already enjoyed: often long before the invention of social networks (the Pope is a prime example). So, while your Twitter activity is indispensable to getting more followers, what you really need is for people to want to follow your account before they stumble upon that viral tweet of yours.
How About Social Influencers?
It is true that a growing number of social influencers arrived at their high follower counts by leveraging the social media alone. It’s also possible that you may aspire to do the same, but you must understand a crucial difference between (1) producing viral content that gathers a lot of followers in the short run, and (2) creating something that will resonate for decades, centuries and millennia. Getting more followers on Twitter should not be a get-rick-quick scheme (see this → article to learn why you should not buy Twitter followers), and although employing viral tactics is okay, it is a long-term plan that you should adhere to, lest the followers you have today forget that they follow you tomorrow and unfollow you the day after.
The Quantum Leap from a Follower to a Leader
So, how do you make this happen? How, from an average user looking to get more followers, do you become somebody who collects them like a celebrity? How do you make people come to your account on their own and persuade their friends to do the same?
Simply: by being irreplaceable for them.
How do you do that?
By giving them something valuable that nobody else did.
Get Followers on Twitter by Being Unique
Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest in Monte Carlo and came in third.
“Lucky Number Slevin”
The concept of personal uniqueness is heavily underplayed in conversations on Twitter followers, getting reflected only in the truism about unique content; yet nobody is talking about you. Paradoxically, it is your uniqueness that will draw the others your way. You can design subtle ruses to manipulate your audience into successfully figuring out the truth on their own, or you can blatantly tell everybody what’s what, but what you say has to be both valuable and innovative. Don’t think that the vanguard or technology, music, writing, performing arts, etc. is reserved for celebrities. You already possess all it takes to equal them (or realize that more rewarding things exist); the only questions is: how deep you’ll have to dig to get to it, and how long it will take?
The First Step to Meeting Your Unique Self
The quest for one’s uniqueness is a subject of an advanced discussion, but it beings with identifying one’s area(s) of expertise. Being a leader requires intimate familiarity with a particular field, so start with the one you’re best at and ask yourself: what can I bring to the table? What is it that I know that I never saw or heard elsewhere? Don’t worry if your original idea is small: firstly, you never know how large it will seem to others (even one man’s trash is another man’s treasure), and more importantly, you need to develop a habit of introducing innovation. Producing and polishing your first idea will augment your creative capacities, and soon the next one will follow. And, with enough practice, you will be able to bring innovation to anything you’ll focus your attention on.
Tweeting on Trending Topics
On Twitter, tweeting on trending topics is a great way to practice your originality and ideation. The main pitfall here is avoiding to say something you know will win you favors because you’ve already seen that opinion work. Remember: if you are using something you didn’t come up with, you remain a follower, regardless of likes and retweets you get. Instead, think of something useful, captivating, relevant (funny, eye-opening, observant…) that everybody else missed. By doing this, not only will you exercise your creative muscle (and pick up some well-deserved followers), but actually experience what Twitter is designed for: promoting the sharpness of human minds. And, as long as you remain an honest judge of your efforts regardless of the feedback you’re getting, there’s nowhere to go but up: both in terms of your follower count, and (most importantly) personal evolution.
Self-Reflecting Commentary
You say there’s a lesson that you want to teach
Well here I am baby, practice what you preachBarry White – “Practice What You Preach”
I’m sure you’ve already realized that this article is, itself, a practice on what it preaches. I’m a professional digital marketer, and the research I’ve done on how to get followers on Twitter taught me nothing new. Which, itself, was an invitation to consider the problem from an angle nobody had taken. The solution was on the surface: if everybody else talks about tools and how to use them, come up with a good reason why you’d be using them. A good reason always wins in the long run.
Word.
Next Steps: How to Get More Twitter Followers
Now that you’ve both (1) learned the conceptual basis for success on Twitter, and (2) followed the words of wisdom from Captain Obvious (remember: you must tweet more), more people are becoming your fans on Twitter daily. Now the question quickly changes to “how do I get more followers?”, since going at the current rate may take a very long time. For that, you need to add some new tactics (and fine-tune the proverbial ones you’re already using), and the following article will help you:
Next article: “How to Get More Twitter Followers”
See you soon.
by Danil Rudoy
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