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Remember the last time you googled “Increase Twitter Followers”? Now, think of how overwhelmed you were trying to wade through all the blog posts, articles, and videos promising astronomical growth results for your Twitter profile.

As of today, that google search yields 5.9 million results, including:
• Super-Secret Strategies for 5,000 New Followers!
• How to get Free Twitter Followers!
• Gain Twitter Followers Quickly!

It all sounds great and hey, many of them actually work to add more followers. But, before you begin researching how to add 10,000 followers in a day, ask yourself WHY you want to increase your following. What’s your purpose for creating a Twitter profile? What are your Twitter goals? What will an increased following do for your small business? If yours is a personal Twitter account and the goal is simply lots of “Twitter love”, then by all means, have at it! On the other hand, if this is your small business account and you need to make an industry impact or grow your business, I’d caution you to try a different approach.

Your social media and/or Twitter goals should be directly related to your overall business objectives. A large Twitter following, just for the sake of having a large following, will not benefit your business. You should have a clear understanding of how the followers you seek can benefit the growth of your business. Will they help increase your brand recognition in the right circles? Will these followers be at all interested in your business or your expertise? Will they have any interest in clicking through to your website to get more information or signing up to be on your email list? If the 1000 new followers aren’t doing any of these things for your business, you’ve attracted the wrong crowd.

Gaining the right follower for your business may require more energy and effort, but the benefits will show themselves in the long run.

Try one or two of these tips to get the right people following your brand.

Find your direct competitors, large or small, and follow their followers.

The people and/or companies in your industry have the audience you want, as they will typically share similar interest. The people engaging your competitors concerning their products or services will also engage your company. Follow them, engage them, and watch them follow or follow you back!

Use tools that can make that process easier, efficient, and more productive.

Tweepi is a free tool that helps you find relevant Twitter followers specific to your industry or interests. You can search for possible followers using your competitors’ handle, company name, interests, etc. Twitter will, in turn, notify them that you’re following them. More than likely, they’ll check you out follow back! From Tweepi, you can also create follow lists of influencers and can also tweet from the dashboard! Filters also help you choose accounts to follow based on location, number of followers, tweet count, and many more.

Crowdfire is a tool that also recommends accounts to follow based on interest and other followers you’ve selected in your industry. It also helps to manage your Twitter and Instagram accounts by communicating who’s following you, who’s not following back, who’s inactive, etc. One thing I love about Crowdfire is its curating feature. Based on your chosen interest, it will suggest articles to tweet and Instagram images to like. Both are great ways to garner more interest and gain followers.

Twitter Analytics is part of your Twitter account and provides lots of statistics that may be of interest in the quest to grow your following. You can see what tweets had the highest impressions, how many people visited your profile, engagement percentage for each of your tweets, etc., etc., etc. If you’re not sure how to use it, please take the time to do so. It’s a great way to get a better understanding of the kind of tweets that work well and garner more followers.

Add links to your tweets – they get better exposure

Remember that link you used to get to this blog? Yep, that one. Well, according to Salesforce research, tweets with links included receive 85% more clicks, or engagement. EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT! That means more people will click the link to your information and are more likely to follow you. So, every tweet you send out should have a link! You know what… don’t even consider this a tip. Consider it a tweet requirement!

Increasing Twitter followers is easy, but growing the RIGHT followers takes a bit more strategy. Remember, the end goal should always be to grow your business, In order to do this, you’ve got to engage people who are interested in what you have to say, which brings me to another topic – TWITTER ENGAGEMENT. You can multiply your following, but to move your business goal needle, they must engage with your content. We’ll talk about that in the next blog!

In the meantime, what tips do you have to gain better Twitter followers?