I got an email one morning from a networking contact I met on LinkedIn asking about getting followers on Twitter.
He asked:
I have a question. Currently I have about 15k twitter followers adding about 250 per day, how the heck did you get to 50k+? Have you been able to monetize your followers in anyway? Connect in multiple ways?
That’s actually 3 questions.. so I thought I should answer them all here to help others who ask. ![6450147095_8d2354099e_b[1]](http://profitablesocialmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/6450147095_8d2354099e_b1.jpg?b9a2cc "6450147095_8d2354099e_b[1]")
My reply:
Funny you asked about Twitter in an email after I reached out to you on Twitter yesterday with didn’t get a response there. No worries. I’ve found it’s best to listen to my market wherever they want to talk and respond to help if I can. I’d say you are in Stage 2 the Three Stages or Twitter Acceptance Your question about monetizing was a dead giveaway. I took a quick look at your profile and it’s obvious that you are trying to broadcast on Twitter. Not a single conversation on the first page.
The secret to Get Followers on Twitter (or anywhere) is to LISTEN and LOVE.
- LISTEN: Read others Tweets. Learn what your market wants and get it for them.
- LOVE: Respond to questions, refer people to resources.. especially ones that aren’t your own sales process and say thank you whenever you can.
Stage 3 conversations are where the fun lies. Have fun helping people and you will be attractive or “Follow Worthy” as we talk about in Twitter Revolution You may be getting advice that some system will get you more followers and automate marketing on Twitter. Many of them don’t work, even the ones that do will make you look like a 20th century marketer and could get you labeled as a spammer. The “followers” number posted on a profile is not the best indicator of whether someone is helping other. It is one indicator of activity. Other indicators would be
- The number of conversations you have
- The time you have recommended a good link that doesn’t point to a self serving sales page
- How often someone says “thanks for the help”
- The use of the retweet functions (RT) to share others tweets.
A few “famous off Twitter” people build up a following regardless of whether they engage the public. Most of use won’t see any value from Twitter until we engage in listening and love (caring). “People don’t care how much you know until the know how much you care” — Stephen R Covey There are many examples of sales through Twitter. Dell attributes $6.5 million to posting deals. Dell can do that, they are a multi billion dollar company. ![tony_CEO[1]](http://profitablesocialmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/tony_CEO1.gif?b9a2cc "tony_CEO[1]")
Zappos is a better example of a company that gets “listen and love” The CEO tweets as @Zappos and most of the office staff does too. You may see a special offer, but mostly they are listening to their customers talk about shoes and joining conversations to add value, help and spread love and good energy.
The Secret of High Follower Counts
They don’t do much for click through results. More connection give you more opportunities to listen and love and more conversations result in real people, real relationships and real business. However, when I post a link with tracking data.. the results are about the same as when I had 1/10 the followers. Twitter is not a broadcast medium. The revolution in sales and marketing is just starting. With the technology we have now, there is no reason to ever try to pitch someone that is not anxious to hear from you. Rather, we teach our clients monitor the Tweet stream for conversations and questions of those that are looking for a solution (Listen), then where appropriate, join in the conversation answer a question give advice without any expectation of making a sales pitch (LOVE). You can focus on helping people in your target market, or just help in general. People will be attracted to you when you GIVE.. it’s the Law of Reciprocity (you can get anything you want if you help enough others get what they want).. we want to do business with givers.. people that we know, like and trust. Asking for a sale too soon kills that process. Fortunately, the technology today allows us to meet and network, get to know people and build a trust relationship fast. A good salesman knows that marketing is a process and hones his skill. Today, the skill that we all need to learn is “listen and love” .. it’s a lot more fun than cold calling, much more productive and will transform us into better people. Why waste time selling to someone that doesn’t want to buy.. there are millions looking for whatever you have.. just go help them!
Follow People Who Are Doing Social Media Right
My Twitter Radio show has guests with news and tips.. but our primary goal is to allow Twitter users to meet and mingle with leaders in social media. Listen live to Social Media Radio or use iTunes to get all the past episode free 
@WarrenWhitlock
Exactly! and explains why you and I have had twitter interactions. Buying followers? No interaction or acknowledgement, fine if you have a huge amount of followers, but repeatedly? No. Following and then unfollowing without any communication and within in days of following, well, that will get you unfollowed as well.
Surprising to me that some would have to be taught this as to me it is just common sense, but I’m not marketing anything except myself!
Thanks! Now I’m going to go find and listen to your social media podcast.
We are people. We like to have conversations, make new connections and share stories. Simple as that
How to gain many followers? I just have 56 followers right now, so can anybody help me how to get some or just tweet me, my Twitter account was @TheBrunoMarsss. Please and thank you guys
Kevin
Looks like you missed the post above. Begging for followers is just going to slow you down. Follow what I said and you’ll do fine.
I started a twitter acct a few years ago. I follow 4 people but I have 90,000 followers! How did this happen?
Do share what you have learned
I have 16k followers best idea is to be yourself and know how to trend yourself follow me @JRL_styles
James
What you got from the post was “brag about your number and ask for followers?”
That’s not at all what I intended to be the message, but if that was “being yourself” I’m all for it.
how do people have over 300.000 followers?
Each perrson following decided that the user is saying something they want to hear.
Great post Warren! People that buy followers aren’t fooling anyone but themselves. At the end of the day, it’s all about posting quality content, engaging, and being utterly helpful to others without expectations.
People need to stop falling into the “herd mentality” as it adds no value to their presence or the social media community. I’d rather have 2,000 quality followers over 20,000 mimes any day of the week.
Keep up the great work. You rock!
Gabriel Reynoso
@TheLinxGroup
Gabriel,
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I notice the follower count and like that it rises. That’s my ego talking 🙂
Sometimes I’d like to have those numbers eliminated and replace with number helped.. but I imagine that would be used for some bot too. LOL
Thank you for sharing
Warren
Warren,
We all like to receive that email from TwitterCounter saying your follower counts has increased by XYZ… it surely strokes everyone’s ego. But only if it based on true actions and not because some Fiverr accounts were set out to handle your growth.
You already know, an organic approach is visceral and will lead to solid dialogs and networking. All the best!
I turned off all the notices.. When TwitterCounter was new, many posted milestones. I remember hiting 300, 400 500 and such, at 1500, we were on a chat working on the book and both @coachdeg and I hit 1500 during that chat. That’s pretty much the last celebration.
I knew she was growing faster than me.. and I suppose it was my ego that knew a race with her was not going to make me look good. So I started looking at what good it was for use to be in the top 50 or 100 users on Twitter (possible before the celebrities arrived). So while this was fueled by my desire to end the popularity contests, I started focusing more and more on the number that really matters. The ONE PERSON that I’m addressing a tweet to.
I post a few “news and link” tweets and make some comments about whatever comes to mind. But for most of the tweets, it’s me answering another person. Usually not a group, but just one person. I’m aware that thousand may see it and others might chime in and that’s all fine and dandy.. but that works better when I’m just talking to one person.
Today I’ve learned to do that in comments on blog posts, emails, and even when speaking to a live audience.
“The secret to Twitter (and marketing) is to LISTEN and LOVE.” That’s fantastic advice! As I have been transitioning my own business from mostly programming to mostly consulting, I’m making an effort to spend more time LISTENING on mediums like Twitter, and I appreciate the fact that your article tells me I’m headed in the right direction. I still have a lot to work on, but it’s positive reinforcement nonetheless.
Thank you Warren!
You got it right Mike.
A personal connection is more important that any mass number.
I like to say now that the only number that matters is 1.. the one person I’m talking to at the moment. Currently, that’s YOU
Thanks for dropping by
That is excellent advice as I am working on this too and surely but slowly it’s working. Talk to people and answer their questions as it works.
My twitter follow ration is 10,300 followers and I follow four people.
My stream is a mix of broadcast, and engagement.
Cheers
Good to see that it helped. I look forward to our conversations
Thanks for the advice, now I know I have been doing it all wrong. My plan now is to engage more in my followers.
Thanks
I am 29k followers in about 2 and 1/2 years. I don’t believe in buying followers, unless you are a startup and need some numbers to attract customers.
I believe to be successful you need to interact with your followers, be interesting and back up your tweets with links as much as possible
Yes. Like I’ve been saying for years.. followers aren’t the measure of value on Twitter. It’s the people you connect with and what you learn from listening
The best way I’ve found over the last 4 yrs to attract and keep followers is to associate with those that have similar interests, are socially active on the major networks, reciprocate in tweeting, are good listeners and are constructive in their critiques so you are constantly learning new, innovative and best practices. Then you nurture those online friendships in the same way you do in the real world. With over +80K on one account and +13.5K and +5K on two others, I also diversify the type of content I share via each profile. Thanks for the post Warren!
Good point Ron,
The number of followers you get has no value, the number of people who you engage with does. I’m very general in my interests and try to connect with more people The business accounts that just blast out messages, deal of a day or affiliate ads and entertainer fan clubs are often not interested in a conversation, but at least some of those are manned by a real person.
The games of “followback” and retweet clubs get too automated, even if manual. There’s nothing to say to someone who says “give me a S/O”. If you aren’t talking to people, why try to get more connections?
Nothing groundbreaking but the problem is that no one follows this simple advice. Great post!
Success is usually not about breaking new ground. It comes from helping others, and that’s very often the very basics 🙂
I think the most important thing is to not be boring, and be a little out of reach.
By that I mean, mix it up a little in terms of content and conversation, but replying to every RT or reply to a tweet is unsustainable.
My account is @CatherineWPhoto which reflects my interests in photography, however I worked in politics for many years, an interest which I still retain. My interest in politics and religion gives my stream an edge. People either love me or hate me, but my ratio of 10,384 followers to my follow of 4 speaks for itself.
Cheers
I don’t know how to be not boring. I find it easier to be something than be not something
I try to be interesting. That’s easy, I just listen and respond with love 🙂
Keep saying it, maybe more folks will “get it.” Social media is a great marketing tool but only if you remember your market is full of people. And people want to interact! Twitter is my favorite platform because it’s such a quick way to join in a conversation and make connections. I really don’t understand the obsession with numbers being such a big deal that people resort to buying followers. What in the world is the point? For social media to truly work, it has to be about the relationships, not the numbers. Nice article!
There are plenty of people to listen too, so I won’t worry about those who don’t listen to me
I do keep saying this because people ask me to. If I listen and they ask for something else, I’ll know
Listen and love, it’s as simple as that.
How much time do you put into Twitter on a daily basis ?
I look at Twitter as a time saver, not spent time. I can contact dozens in a few minutes, most of these contacts are me answering questions posted to me or to a person I’m tracking.
I jump into the conversation, post 140 characters and move on. Takes a few minutes between other tasks.
Some days, I post interesting links to articles that take just a click while I’m reading and if I’m at my desk, I can spend any amount of time in chats and discussion. More than most would, as I choose to uses Twitter more to meet new people and build relationships (I did write the book :).
Bottom line. If it wasn’t good for business, I wouldn’t be there.
Social Media is still dominated by folks coming out of the ad world. I think it is s a tough mind set switch for them. They are used to the waterfall technique of creating a message, broadcasting the message, evaluating the sales & doing it again. The idea of listening is unfortunately foreign to many of them. I suspect that better listening might help them in both places.
I don’t get how you would think we are do I acted. It’s a level playing field here. The are many who don’t get that, they will learn quick enough
We absolutely love your blog and find a lot of your post’s to be just what I’m looking for.
Do you offer guest writers to write content for yourself?
I wouldn’t mind writing a post or elaborating on a number of the subjects you write regarding here. Again, awesome blog!
Isabelle
I assume you are a bot, or someone without any social media training and not a native English speaker.. but rather than just hit the SPAM button, I’ll take this opportunity to answer the questions about quest posting 🙂
YES. I’d love to run any well written, unique post about social media marketing or business profits from digital marketing.
But you’ll have to get a real human to write it. LOL
FYI, a comment that doesn’t address the post it’s attached to (or even the site) is a sure fire way to tell you are a spammer. Plus, the first thing we teach someoone about social media is to be honest, authentic, and open to personal communication. Also, real people don’t read blog posts in groups.. saying “we” make me wonder “who are the other people?” … A quick check on your name show 1) no last name, 2) an email address that looks like it was made up for spamming and 3) not photo.
It’s fine if you are not in the US and just learning to write. It’s not good that you are hiding. Makes us think you are hiding other things as well.
Warren, forgive me but I have never heard of you before, but obviously you know what you are talking about and I loved the post. While I as reading it, I was thinking to myself that this information is too good to give away for free. Yet that was the whole point of the post. I have acquired many clients on twitter by doing what you suggest and that is helping others. I have gotten away from that lately, but will get back to it. Thanks great post!