Twitter Marketing 101: How to Gain Followers Fast

So you have a product or a service or a message. Good. Now, you need to get that product, service, or message out in front of people. You want them to learn about you, and to become customers, members, or subscribers. In short… you want to do some serious online marketing, but with the endless series of social media marketing platforms available to you, including some that seem to overlap (such as Facebook and Google+), perhaps you’re not sure where to start. One thing you’re sure of: you don’t want to waste your time and money trying to fill an endless and unquenchable social media black hole.

At the same time, it can’t be ignored because the potential gains can be enormous with the right social media marketing strategy.

Social Media is perhaps the most powerful and influential new force of our time, and is changing the world. With roughly a billion Facebook users alone, the impact of social media and its potential for marketing is staggering. Properly harnessed, social media can be a highly effective way for a business, a non-profit organization, or other entity to spread information, gain a following, and grow to reach a worldwide audience. But where to start?

Not all social media are created equal, and with so many choices, it’s important to strike the right balance between cost and return for your organization. For some, sharing videos on YouTube may be the perfect way to spread the word. For others that may simply be too costly or time consuming. In short, every type of social media has its benefits, costs, and each places different demands on your organization’s time.

Your easiest and safest bet for spreading information quickly, reliably, and with the least amount of effort may be Twitter. Twitter marketing can be a very time-efficient, low-cost way to get your message out there quickly. Twitter marketing can also be a wonderful solution to the time-starved organization or small business owner because it is so blissfully simple and clear: you craft your brief message (maximum 140 characters!), share it with your followers, and they in turn can share it with their network, ideally launching an ever-expanding current of knowledge about your company and whatever it is that makes you great!

However, for your Twitter marketing campaign to be really effective, lots of people have to see it. So, how can you easily attract a steadily growing group of followers? One of the easiest and most overlooked tactics is to start following lots of people and businesses yourself.

With a comparatively small amount of time and effort compared to other forms of social media, you can research current Twitter users to find people who are a good match to your products, services, and interests. You can determine this by browsing their past tweets, checking out their profiles, and, perhaps most telling, see who they are already following. When you start to follow someone, chances are they will be happy to follow you too. Also, when their followers see that someone they are following now follows you, some of them will follow you as well.

Another tactic for gaining Twitter follwers is to directly approach people. Either through Twitter marketing itself, by using other social media outlets, or by leveraging your emails or word of mough, you can ask people to follow you on Twitter. You may be surprised by how many people are wide open to this approach! Twitter marketing is not seen as invasive or spammy, so you can afford to approach people more openly than some other forms of online marketing, such as email marketing.

Consider placing your Twitter connection icon in every appropriate place you can think of, from ad banners next to search results to websites relevant to your offerings to embedding your Twitter icon in emails and every form of advertising. Make it easy for people to find and follow you by placing prominent links and icons wherever you already have online “real estate,” such as your web page or Facebook page, in short, on virtually every online, digital, or printed marketing asset.

Twitter marketing can be the easiest way to build a social media following. But remember the most important tip of all: tie as many tweets as possible back to your other online assets by imbedding links within your tweets to your company website, blog, company Facebook page, and your other social media pages. This will build valuable incoming links from your followers’ blogs, Facebook pages, and other social media sites over time, gradually building traffic and enriching your followers with the full scope of your online content.

Need help in crafting a smart online marketing strategy that includes all the right social media to fit your needs and budget? If so then please  Contact us today for a free, no-obligation initial consultation.