Bloggers Journal

Twitter is a fantastic resource to use to build a following for your website.  It’s an even better marketing tool because you can very easily inform your followers of your new posts.  Your readers then, fingers crossed, retweet your post links, meaning their readers can read your post.  This repeats…

BUT, what if you don’t have a Twitter following.  What if you just have a few people?  How do you build that following?  Stick with me, and I’ll share with you how I build my Twitter following.

My Twitter following is by no means large.  It’s actually 62 as I type this.  However, 5 days ago it was only 20.  So I guess you could say in 5 days I have tripled my Twitter following.  I’m not going to tell you that this way is right.  It has, however, worked for me.  By all means, give it a try, and some time, and let me know how it goes.

When I started Twitter, it was simply for marketing my site.  And it’s doing this – slowly.  But every little matters.  I started by following some of the big guns in blogging.  Not because they are in my niche, which seems a little hard to define, but because they are successful, and fountains of knowledge – learn from them.

My blog commenting also yielded a number of people to follow as well.  Naturally I added them to my list.  These people, were some of the first to return the following, and became followers of me.  Why?  These readers had recognised me from my comments on their blogs, as well as others.

I started to follow more people, far more than followed me back.  I did this for looking for people amongst some of my following, for like-minded people.  I wanted people that advertised a passion for something – usually blogging.  I think it is important to have followers that share something in common with you.  For me, it was simply blogging.

I also started to follow people that would benefit me.  These included people with expertise in particular areas like search engine optimisation, or monetising your blog or marketing.  Like the big fish, these people would be my drip fed knowledge.

Okay, so you’ve gotten this far.  But you haven’t many followers.  To get people to follow you back, you need to engage with your readers.  This way you can get their attention.  When you have that, you have a brief moment in time to lure them to your site.  It is important to fill out the brief biography on Twitter.  Have a look at mine,

26yr old blogger aiming for big things – I tweet and RT good content! I re-follow too

It’s short and simple.  It says who I am and what I want.  It also adds incentive because I tweet regularly, and I will retweet good material for me followers.  Also, I will refollow, if you follow me.

If you’ve done this, all that remains is to check out the updates on Twitter.  I have mentioned that you should follow some of the big guns on blogging.  The benefit of this, is that you can interact with them, just like you can interact with everyone else.  This is prime opportunity to make a name for yourself.

When advertising yourself, you need to take advantage of human behaviour.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, humans can behave like sheep.  What I mean is they generally follow each other.  I’m not calling my readers and followers sheep, I am very grateful you read my articles and follow me.  The point I’m making is that if you can get yourself some sort of recognition with a big blogger, say for instance they retweet an article you wrote, or they follow you, you will find a number of their followers will follow you too.

I’m hearing a few screams of WHY amongst you.

Well, back to the sheep analogy.  The big blogger folk are the ones leading the way.  Some of their followers can sometimes be just that – literally followers.  If the big bloggers retweet your article, it’s virtually an implied message indicating approval and value towards your article.  The result is that some of their followers will start following you.

This strategy has been working for me so far, and I hope it continues.  I’ll try and post an update at some point in the future on my progress.

How have you been expanding your Twitter following?  Have you used the same methods that I have mentioned?  Maybe you did it a little differently – how?  Regardless, let me know how you get on.

Image Credit – fossmaniac