One of the great mysteries of the digital world is reaching more people, faster.
How do you get people to notice you?
How do you increase your engagement rate?
Those are basically the questions I had when I became active on Twitter, around the middle of May 2020.
When I started Tweeting stuff, I had no clue what I was doing. I would just Tweet something random and hope someone liked it.
After about two months or so, I had a lousy 120 followers.
Right then, I decided to do something different. I changed my "Twitter strategy", and it worked.
In just 7 days, I went from 120 followers to 750 followers, had way higher engagement rates, impressions and comments.
Here's a step-by-step of how I did it.
1. I Stopped Tweeting Pointless Stuff
One of the first things I saw when looking at my previous Tweets was a lack of purpose. They were, in essence, stupid.
As a wise man once said (me), stupid Tweets don't get you anywhere.
So I decided to focus 80% of my content on one thing: freelance web development.
Whether it was a motivational tweet, a thread of tips, a question, or a poll, I would focus my tweets on this topic.
This made it a lot easier to Tweet, because I knew what I was trying to do: educate people on freelance web development.
2. I Ran A Contest
After finding my focus point, I felt good. I felt like my Twitter feed was the best on Twitter (hint: it's not).
But I still had work to do.
Because all I had now was great Tweets, and 120 followers. On average, my Tweets got about 2 likes (on a good day) and 0 retweets.
That's pretty crappy.
I needed a way to get people to notice me. The plan was, if I could get people to at least look at my profile, a percentage of them would like my content, and follow me.
So I ran a contest.
I decided to give away a free website. I chose this prize, because it's still inside my niche (web development).
To enter, people had to follow me and retweet the Tweet. That's all!
I ran the contest for 2 days, and got over 60 retweets and follows from that.
But last time I checked, 60 new followers is not a 500% increase.
But I think I know why the contest kick-started my Twitter growth.
Twitter Likes Me
The Twitter algorithm is a mysterious creature that has no name, no face, and is quite unpredictable.
However, it allowed me to gain over 450 new followers in the course of a few days.
I am by no means an expert on the Twitter algorithm, but here's what I think happened.
- I Tweet something in my niche that gets WAY more retweets and likes than my normal Tweets.
- Twitter sees this, and realizes that the Twitterverse must like my new niche: web development.
- Twitter starts pushing my other Tweets within the same niche to more people.
- As a result, even MORE people see my Tweets, and Twitter sees that those Tweets are doing better as well.
So basically, as soon as I got results from the giveaway, I Tweeted several times about freelance web development.
The Blueprint
So that's how I grew on Twitter! I realize that it's easier to follow and get the same results if it's in a step-by-step format, so I've created a blueprint that you can follow.
- Find your niche
- Tweet 10-20 times in that niche
- Do a giveaway
- Make sure the prize is in your niche
- Run the giveaway for 2-3 days.
- Tweet about your niche more
- Each day your giveaway is running, Tweet 5+ times about your niche.
- Mix up the content types. Do a few motivational Tweets, a few polls, and some questions.
- Comment, comment, comment.
- After your giveaway is over, you need to keep the momentum going. Do this by commenting on as many related Tweets as possible (in your niche).
- Don't be spammy; offer valuable advice in each comment
Thank You All!
I want to thank all my new followers as well, and especially Nehemiah Kiv. Nehemiah helped me run my giveaway, and it was awesome! Go follow him on Twitter 🙌
So that's it! Let me know if you were able to grow your Twitter following using my guide! You can email me at jarodpeachey@gmail.com, or contact me on Twitter!