6 of the Most Well-Guarded Secrets to Get Followers on Twitter

“Jeep Puzzle” revolutionized the concept of how to get followers on Twitter back in 2010. It was developed at the Leo Burnett advertising agency’s Madrid office, with Executive Creative Director Chacho Puebla leading a group of developers.

The Jeep puzzle kept the Twitterati buzzing

The Jeep puzzle kept the Twitterati buzzing

This wacky strategy took pictures from Twitter profiles and created an online puzzle using them, which could only be unlocked if the user playing the game had access to the profile which was there in the puzzle.

This unlocked a huge number of profiles and engaged several people who would win Jeep T-shirts bearing the Jeep logo.

This is just one example of some of the many ideas that have taken shape in a shrewd marketer’s mind to get followers on Twitter – and each of them has been different from the other.

With almost 42% of Twitter’s users being ardent followers of brands, Twitter marketing strategies are the new ‘it’ thing in the world of social media. Moreover, a well laid out plan to get followers on Twitter can send Twitter into a tizzy.

Why is a unique Twitter marketing strategy essential for a brand name that wants to make it big? Well, in today’s world where technology guides humanity, there is a myriad of products that are trying to gain a hold in the market – both offline and online.

Therefore, out of all the strategies that are available, it is very easy for a person to overlook the effective ones that will really help you get followers on Twitter.

What is the X-factor that decides whether a marketing strategy connected with Twitter is a hit or a miss? It is a known fact that Twitter as a platform can bring in a lot of traffic, become an excellent SEO technique and rank a web page a few notches higher than its contemporaries’ rank.

Therefore, here are a few Twitter Marketing secrets that the Twitterati should know if they’re looking to get followers on Twitter. It is advisable that you, as a prudent marketer, do not forget to include them in your strategies:

1. Hashtags can make or break the deal in a Twitter marketing strategy

The RiteTag tool can be of immense help.

The RiteTag tool can be of immense help.

Hashtags are a phenomenon nowadays. No one can deny that. A tweet that doesn’t end with a hashtag appears to be a dry and tasteless tweet.

However, the Twitterati needs to be careful with hashtags. They must use them strategically with an eye on the hashtags that are going viral at that particular time.

Tweets with hashtag have statistically proven to engage an extra 12% traffic as compared to a tweet bereft of a hashtag. RiteTag is a tool that can prove useful for trend-worthy hashtags, which you need to generate.

Segregating the best out of these and then testing them can also make a big difference to your Twitter marketing strategy.

Consider the brilliant success story of the #Deal30 hashtag run by American Airlines as a part of a campaign called ‘Deal 30’, which involved a 30-day long business program.

Tweeting #Deal30 hashtag and following the @AAdvantage Twitter profile could give a person a chance to win 30,000 AAdvantage miles through an online contest.

In addition, within one week, the changes were visible – the click-through rate from Twitter to their website link generated 18,000 clicks while the Twitter account experienced an increase of 70% in the number of followers.

2. Twitter chats can generate a number of leads

A simple guide on how to engage in a ‘TweetChat’.

A simple guide on how to engage in a ‘TweetChat’.

A Twitter chat is simply a discussion surrounding a tweet. It is a platform where like-minded people can come together and express their views on interests that are common to them.

They can connect more people, grow their communities, position their worth in a marketing realm, add gravitas to their expertise and the greater audience can discover them.

Twitter chats are almost like online tea parties between people of a particular niche – they act as a great networking tool that will generate leads, get followers on Twitter and also help you discover people who might have valuable insights who are worth following.

3. Pictures are important, but making pictures automatically visible is more important

A tweet with an expanded picture

A tweet with an expanded picture

Multimedia content on Twitter generally comes up as a link. It’s a fact that tweets linked with pictures from Instagram or from anywhere can increase the chances of a retweet by 35% and in the case of videos, by 28%.

However, if tweets are posted without the Twitter App or without accessing the website, then Twitter’s Image Expand feature doesn’t notice the picture. Hence, a picture just becomes a link, and no one likes to click on those links.

In case of videos, Twitter users often integrate it with video sharing sites like YouTube, which instantly expands the visual content in the tweet, and recently they also add GIFs or animated pictures’ to tweets.

In the case of pictures linked to an Instagram account, a person must use the IFTTT (If This, Then That) tool to avoid Instagram pictures only appearing as links to a tweet.

4. Organizing and starting a Tweet-A-Thon to get followers on Twitter

get followers on Twitter

get followers on Twitter

Tweet-A-Thons’, which are online events which engage a flurry of tweets on a particular issue, are magnets for awareness. Running such an event not only raises awareness of the issue at hand but also raises the visibility of the creator’s profile.

Tweet-A-Thons, however, require immense planning. An issue needs to be centered upon then the organization that can handle such an issue, or that is involved in activities associated with such issue, needs to be engaged and proper staff has to be found to coordinate the logistics involved.

An outstanding example would be the one held by USA for UNHCR on June 13, 2011 for World Refugee Day as a part of its Blue Key Campaign, aimed at convincing Americans to purchase a symbolic $5 Blue Key pendant in support for refugees worldwide.

The Tweet-A-Thon managed to produce 1,524 tweets using the #bluekey hashtag-considerably higher than the regular daily average of 50. The traffic to their website increased by 169% and resulted in an increase of 50% in sales. The fact that the Khaled Hosseini Foundation appeared as a special guest added an extra edge.

5. Targeting the right audience

How McDonald’s Canada used the technique of ‘Promoted Accounts’

How McDonald’s Canada used the technique of ‘Promoted Accounts’

Every tweet you send does not reach out to all of your followers, nor does it appease all of them.  Hence targeting specific users with the ‘@username’ or the ‘via’ tag can not only generate one-to-one conversations but also can take the product to its most desirable audience.

It also works well in the case of images, where one can tag up to 10 users in an image. If used strategically, you will get followers on Twitter and much more engagement with them.

Alternatively, a person may use the concept of Promoted accounts, which shows a list of accounts that the user might be interested in.

Sample this: In 2011, Golin Harris introduced a Promoted Account for McDonald’s Canada in order to increase @McD_Canada’s number of new followers. And the results of this targeted promotion using hashtags and specific keywords were quite successful.

McDonald’s Canada not only gained 9,503 fresh followers, but also drew in 14,200 more profile views with an overall 4% engagement rate, using retweets, replies and clicks.

Thus paid advertising and connecting to an audience within a specific location saw a noticeable spurt in numbers and made for a brilliant Twitter marketing campaign.

6. Sharing content multiple times and retweeting judiciously

sharing and retweeting content

sharing and retweeting content

The Twitterati isn’t online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so it’s best to schedule out your tweets according to the time period of peak usage. Timing out Twitter marketing strategies is important because most users are online in the afternoon or during the weekend.

By sharing content repeatedly within this period, you can generate up to 86% greater engagement. It also allows experimentation to make the next tweet visually different from the former one.

The retweet button often seems like the most logical way to engage users, but although the person, whose original tweet is retweeted, is notified, Twitter doesn’t have the provision that allows them to return the favor of retweeting.

Hence, the best way to retweet is to copy the original text and paste it with ‘RT’ written on top. After all, nobody knows whether the other side will reciprocate favors or not. In addition, tools like TweetDeck allow users to edit and retweet a specific tweet.

Conclusion

To conclude, Twitter marketers should stealthily incorporate the above six mantras into their marketing strategies.

Social media marketing is an evolving process, and it will hardly take much time before these secrets become commonplace and better tips rise out of the blue to dethrone their predecessors.

There isn’t any hard and fast mantra to get followers on Twitter with a brilliant Twitter marketing strategy – strategies are essentially ideas that can spring out of any marketer’s head.

What really matters is whether you, as a marketer, continuously educate yourself. In this rapidly progressing world of social media, staying fixated on outdated and rusted opinions and rules can prove to be abysmal in the long run.

Staying up to date and keeping an open mind is all that matters!

Did you think the ninja strategies in this article will help you get followers on Twitter?

Let us know what you think with a quick comment below. 🙂

About the Author

Andy Thompson

Andy Thompson

Andy Thompson has been a freelance writer for a long while. Her passion in writing is her main drive in crafting articles that are engaging, informative, and meaningful. Her partnership with TroopSocial has given her a new opportunity to take writing to a whole new level.

 

Featured images:

The Jeep puzzle kept the Twitterati buzzing

The Jeep puzzle kept the Twitterati buzzing

 

Image source: author-owned

 

 

 

 

The RiteTag tool can be of immense help.

The RiteTag tool can be of immense help.

 

 

Image source: author-owned

 

 

 

A simple guide on how to engage in a ‘TweetChat’.

A simple guide on how to engage in a ‘TweetChat’.

 

 

 

Image source: author-owned

 

 

A tweet with an expanded picture

A tweet with an expanded picture

 

 

Image source: author-owned

 

 

 

get followers on Twitter

get followers on Twitter

 

 

Image courtesy of bplanet at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

 

How McDonald’s Canada used the technique of ‘Promoted Accounts’

How McDonald’s Canada used the technique of ‘Promoted Accounts’

 

 

Image source: author-owned

 

 

 

sharing and retweeting content

sharing and retweeting content

 

 

Image courtesy of kanate at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

 

One Response

  1. Emanuelle Taylor August 4, 2015

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