How I Broke 5,000 Followers On Twitter… And Into The Top 500
5 days ago, my Twitter followers count crossed the 5,000 milestone. In fact, as of now, my Twitter shows 5,425 followers. At the same time, according to both Twitterholic and TwitterCounter, I am now officially part of the exclusive Top 500 on Twitter 🙂
It’s just amazing to see how fast my follower count has been growing… considering just 28 days ago I was at 1,425. It took me 10 months to hit that mark, but I was able to add an additional 4,000 followers in just a tenth of the time – that’s nearly 400% growth in 28 days!
So how did I do it? Here’s the 3 step formula:
1. Follow
Follow Others – Follow as many people as you can, who share the same interest/passion. For example, if you are in the golf market, you want to follow golfers, golf trainers, golf enthusiasts etc. That’s the idea. So how do you find people who are in the same niche as you? There are 3 ways:
- Friends. Obviously, first follow the people that you personally know. They are probably going to follow you back 🙂
- Find thought-leaders or big-guns in your industry and follow the people who they follow (or the people who follow them). If the people you’re interested are interested in these people, chances are you will be interested in them too.
- Follower Suggestion Tools. There are plently of websites/scripts out there that will analyze the list of people you follow or following you and give you suggestions on who you should follow. A great one out there is called Who Should I Follow? There are also Twubble & Twitter Grader.
UPDATE (16th Jan 2009) – Twitter has now launched a new suggestion tool that helps you find people to follow – http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions
I tend to look for people who have a balanced following/followers ratio. These are usually the ones who will follow you back. People who have lots of followers but don’t follow many people usually suggests that they are not into building relationships and making new connections (people use Twitter for different reasons – but in this post I’m talking from a marketer’s perspective). These people are unlikely to follow you back, and probably aren’t worth following (unless they are a thought-leader, guru etc).
It’s going to take a while to build up your network and accumlate your followers. Just keep in mind not to follow 1,000 people in 3 hours otherwise they’ll think you’re a spammer. And NEVER ever use scripts or bots or names that look fishy (e.g. BobSmith4231) as you will simply get banned.
Once you are able to branch out and expand your circle, that’s when you begin to find the TRUE VALUE of Twitter.
Follow People Back – I believe that Twitter is about building MUTUAL relationships. Always follow people back (make sure to check their profile page out first to make sure they are not a spammer trying to get your follow). I mean, if you walked up to somebody in a party and said, “Hi” and that person just turned his back towards you, how would you feel? It’s the same thing with Twitter.
You are seeing more and more gurus (like Loren Feldman, John Reese, Mike Filsaime, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis) doing just that. Somebody like Kevin Rose would be a bad example. Don’t let your ego get in the way. Remember, it’s about SOCIAL media, not SOLO media.
You might be asking, “What if I can’t keep up with 5,000 people that I’m following?” Well, just go get yourself a second Twitter account (like me) and use that just to specifically follow the people you want to hear more about. Guess how much a Twitter account cost? Alternatively, TweetDeck has this cool feature called “Groups” which literally help organize your followers into groups (although I personally don’t really like this and find it a lot easier to get a second account)
2. Tweet!
Tweet Often – After following people, you need to start tweeting – and OFTEN. You need to invest time into social media. People want to know what you’re up to and what you’re all about. Keep in mind of your noise level though as you don’t want to spam people’s Twitter homepage out with your Tweets. I personally post around 10-20 tweets per day.
Provide Value – Make sure your tweets are TWEET-WORTHY. Tweet stuff that are interesting or useful and people will follow you. If all you do is tweet “at work” or “at home” or “at school”, you probably won’t get too many followers. You need to CONTRIBUTE to the community and add VALUE. Produce and share content that your audience will love. That way people will begin to notice you and start re-tweeting your stuff, thus bringing you new followers.
Engage In Conversations – Be part of conversations on Twitter; start asking and answering questions; bring something to the table. If you reply to other people’s Tweets with interesting stuff, people will find you. For example, let’s say you reply to me, I may reply to you by saying:
@JohnSmith I agree with you. The new movie rocked!
Now all of a sudden, 5,430 of my followers will see John Smith and can follow hm with just one-click! Imagine engaging in dozens of those conversations every day – not only do you get new followers but also build new relationships.
Have Personality – Don’t be another “me-too”. Inject your personality into your Tweets if you want to stand out. These people are all your friends, you don’t want to be boring, you want to be FUN.
3. Promote
Twitter Counter – You’ve probably seen those FeedBurner chicklets that display the current count of your RSS subscribers. Well, do the same thing for Twitter to show the count of your Twitter followers on your blog! Like this:
You can easily create it using TwitterCounter. It’s all about social proof. People are more likely to follow you if they see that everybody else is following you as well. Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend you to display it until you hit at least 1,000 followers.
Signatures – Put your Twitter link in your signatures for your emails, forums etc. If you got a mailing list, blast it out to your subscribers and ask them to follow you. If your subscribers don’t know what Twitter is, you might want to take some time to explain what Twitter is, what to do etc.
In fact, Mike Filsaime recently sent out an email doing exactly that and added over 2,000 followers in just 12 hours! It doesn’t just apply to email subscribers, also to your blog readership. Sometimes, taking the time to EDUCATE your subscribers will help boost your Twitter count.
To sum up, it’s really that simple – Follow, Tweet, Promote.
And I’ll like to end it by saying, Twitter is like a cocktail party. You’re there to make new relationships, not hard selling. I think this quote sums it up:
“Facebook is about people you used to know; Twitter is about people you’d like to know better” – Ivor Tossel
And remember to follow me on Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/stanleytang
Wow just came across your blog from Twitter. Great post Stanley!
Especially your last line – “Twitter is like a cocktail party. You’re there to make new relationships, not hard selling.”
Steven
Thank you Steve 🙂
Yeah, social media is all about building relationships. Just think of it like a cocktail party
Leroy here 😉
Great stuff Stan. I talked about many of the things you said here on my tip of the day tweets. Especially the part on providing value. Cant stress the importance of it
Hey Leroy! Finally you commented on my blog LOL
Great information on how to build relationships. I just discovered lot of stuff on twitter with the different links you have provided.
all simple tips but they all work. grats on your milestone
@Srinivasan @Justin – Thank you 🙂
Thanks for sharing your success tips.
Hey Stanley,
This is really good stuff man. Taught me something new today. Let’s follow each other and keep in touch on all our Internet marketing launches:
http://twitter.com/Khaing
@Mindy – Thank you 🙂
@Khai – Hey great to see you around here 🙂 Great PLR products you’ve created. Followed you 🙂
I have formed online store with few team members, how to increase traffic and sales, push much, any free marketing can be use it?
Pls recomended.
http://www.bobbistore.com
Really nice tips for tweeple
New to twitter I thought your blog was great. I especially like the Facebook/Twitter analogy from Ivor. So true! A great way to explain twitter to anyone who wants to know.
[…] I read about this very useful post from my fellow marketer – Stanley Tang. […]
Have you tried mrtweet.net? It is a fantastic tool for both newbies and veterans like yourself. It works much better than twubble or the twitter friend suggestions
Excellent summation.
Interestingly,there was a lot of discussion this evening among my follows about “follosophy” and the whole “dump the tweeps who don’t follow back” and use of Twitter for market, etc.
I’ll be posting this in the forum at http://www.silkfair.com to help others learn how to use twitter.
Best wishes
http://twitter.com/flowersbyfarha
@Steven – Heard of it on Twitter
@Flowersbyfarha – It really depends on HOW you use Twitter. If you’re there to build relationships, then you would be a fool not to follow them back. If you are there simply because you just want to use it as a one-way communication tool, then you probably dont need to follow them back. There aren’t any “rules”
Great info. I’ve started some of these techniques, especially following the real estate community. I’m also hoping to learn how to use the rest of the twitter tools.
I have 150 followers but follow only 50. I think i should start following people back, like you.
The real power of Twitter is not in how many people are following you, but rather how many people you are following. Keep it real, follow people that you admire, and surround yourself with positive energy. There is NO secret to getting people to follow you, just be yourself, and engage in conversation. Easy. Have a good one !
Thanks for the really helpful article. I especially appreciate the fact that you included links to sites to suggest friends. I am fairly new to twitter so having this additional information was really helpful!
Do you have any other suggestions on how to find people you want to follow? For example: I would like to find people in the real estate industry close to where I live.
Michelle
[…] Before reading Stanly Tang’s post on how he crossed 5000 followers, I was following 25 people and was being followed by 70. After […]
I’ve been reading a lot of tips on using twitter lately and I’ve tried implementing a few tips that I learned. I’m just hoping they work for me.
Kenroy
How long have you been active on twitter?
I’m getting soooooooooo exhausted hearing about how everyone is talking about how many followers they have. The first thing is – nobody cares. Second if EVERYONE is trying to get 50,000 followers then who is listening?
It’s pretty obvious (especially in the last week or two) that most people aren’t paying attention to anything anyone is saying… except for themselves.
Twitter’s days are numbered. It might seem cool now, but soon everyone will have their own Twitter on their domain. Twitter is like how everyone use to be on Blogger.com and eventually put their blog on their own domain.
Anyway… everyone… can you please stop obsessing about followers? Thank you. 🙂
First heard about it in Sept 2007. Signed up for an account Feb 2008. Started twittering actively May 2008.
Great tips… I dugg it 🙂
Nice article Stany. Keep up the great work young man. r
[…] client projects, it’s worth having a go at implementing some of the strategies recommended by Stanley Tang, Mike Filsaime, and Kevin […]
Good basic thoughts. It’s weird to me how many people won’t follow their darn followers.
Yes follow to follow is great way to get more followers but this is not really credible either too. that you are getting followers only for following them not based on your what you are tweeting now