How to get more followers on Twitter?

On Twitter, ‘followers’ are one of the most important parameters to judge anyone or any existing brand. An account with a good number of followers gives the instant impression of being known widely.

Basically there are two primary ways to have more followers—Paid and Free! Now most of the readers would surely opt for free ways to gain more followers for Twitter, but let’s first discuss how the paid method works.

Twitter itself provides you the option to gain more followers by signing in for Twitter ads at ads.twitter.com

One has to sign up or sign in here and get started which then leads to the following page and from here you can choose the options and create a campaign that will run on twitter.

These ads being shown on Twitter are based on preferences of the user. Also the users that have similar specifics that of your ad specifications get to see your ad. This will initiate an immediate follow option for them and they also might end up following your handle if they find it interesting enough. Basically these ads work in a way to give you a wider platform and hit the user’s timeline directly for them to take a ‘follow’ action.

Apart from Twitter there are various other private companies also involved in the business of getting more followers to a particular handle. There are several such websites existing that help businesses looking to have a good follower base for their twitter handles.

Now let’s discuss how you can gain more followers on Twitter for free!

Filling up all the required details in the Twitter profile – By filling up all the required details in the profile section and keeping the profile updated can help your profile be seen as a genuine one and can help you get more followers. In the bio section if you mention all details clearly, there is a higher chance of being shown on users’ search results, and you are more likely to get instant followers.

Tweeting about recent trends – Every hour the trends change on Twitter, and if you tweet anything related to the trends, chances are high that your tweets will be seen by many, and you can also get many followers from there. That works as a free promotion!

Tweeting about anything which is enticing, informative or funny – On Twitter, content that is really quirky, sarcastic, informative, creative, or attractive gets more attention. Post something which you find really interesting and that can help you get more followers.

Following others to get a follow back – You must be getting suggestions on Twitter to follow a few profiles that are based on the preferences of your handle, follow them and chances are that you might also get a follow back. Also, do follow the people who follow you to keep the trend intact.

Sync your twitter with your contacts/Facebook/Google –Synchronizing your phone contacts, Facebook and Google contacts with your Twitter profile helps your friends on Twitter find you and they might follow you as well.

Twitter is a very informative and powerful tool for any business if utilized resourcefully. Twitter helps any business generate revenue and can help you target your audience directly and can build prospects as well. Having a good number of followers on Twitter isn’t just about prestige but it also holds real business value.

Pros and Cons of Marketing on Twitter

Increasing social media fondness has given a boost to social media marketing. Twitter, one of the favored social media channels for business, has seen rapid growth in recent times. But Twitter marketing also comes with a few drawbacks. Marketers many a times do not consider the inefficiencies and focus only on the advantages which result in failure in the promotion strategy. Here we have listed some of the advantages as well as disadvantages of Twitter Marketing for a business.

Pros

Multiplicities of Ads

Twitter lets a business promote its brand in various forms, for example, “promoted tweet”. A promoted tweet lets a particular tweet to be pushed on to the timelines of users that match your target segment, which encourages them to follow the handle and can even click on the links on the tweet landing up to various business pages of your brand. Businesses can also promote trends, which appear in the search box in the app and on the left side of the timeline on browser.

Reach

Reaching millions of twitter users is a benefit for any particular business looking for reach. Thanks to Twitter’s segmented databases it reduces time for companies to narrow down their segment and can hit their targeted section’s timeline in no time.

Shortened URL:

Twitter allows shortening the URL for any target webpage of your brand on which you need users to land up. It also saves the characters being used in a particular tweet giving more space for the message as well. With the recent update on twitter, it shortens the URL as much as it can just by updating the number of characters used in the URL and inserting into the post. Simple huh!

Scheduled Tweets

Businesses now can schedule Tweets to be posted in the future.  Both organic and promoted-only Tweets can be scheduled for future delivery, and as needed, coordinated to go live with new or existing campaigns. Anything that can be planned in advance can be scheduled, such as new product releases or regular updates. In addition, you can use this feature to publish Tweets on the weekend, evenings, or other inconvenient times — to keep your Twitter presence lively around the clock. Tweets can be scheduled up to a year in advance and to 1-minute regularity. Apart from it, several online tools are available such as Hootsuite, Twittimer etc. which allow you to schedule tweets when you are unavailable for tweeting. Very helpful!

Cons

Expensive

Not to forget that the twitter promoted trends cost very high in comparison to other social media ad cost. The high cost of twitter marketing can be one of the major drawbacks for the companies that want to promote their brands on twitter!

Difficult to derive the correct ROI

It becomes a challenging job to derive the ROI for investment made in Twitter Ads. For example, say someone clicked on the ad by mistake and it gets counted in the data as a click for the ad but that’s a wasted click for your business!

Spamming

Promoting on twitter rigorously can prove a business as a spammer too! Once a business is on twitter the behavior of that particular handle is being judged and if that is too disturbing for the people less interested in your product/services they can negate your business’ reputation even without your knowledge. Tough thing!

Marketing on social media is easy and fun but it comes with many disadvantages and hence before stepping up social media activities you must be aware of all the possible consequences. Twitter is one of the most widely used social media platforms and has a user database that can boost any business at any given point of time. But to choose twitter for promotion one must have patience for interacting and engaging with users honestly, which will help the business in the long run.

The Internet has become the primary source of information for the majority of consumers. Keywords and phrases are typed into a search engine on a computer or mobile device, and a vast volume of related content is presented to the consumer.

Studies suggest that when using search engines, most people do not go beyond the listings mentioned on the first couple of pages of the search engine results list. It has been noted that 90 percent of all users do not look past the first thirty results. This means a high-ranking website has a much higher probability of getting traffic from search engines than a lower ranking website.

Search Engine Optimization involves a number of activities and initiatives that businesses can implement to achieve high search engine rankings. Such activities address both on-page and off-page ranking factors that can affect a website’s or web page’s search engine rankings for specific search terms, resulting in a high placement in a search engine’s “organic,” or “natural,” or “unpaid” search results.

Most search engines can be divided into two common groups:

1. Spider- or Crawler-Based Search Engines

This refers to an Internet-based tool that searches the index of documents or web pages for a particular term, phrase, or text specified by the user, and produces results that are collected, sorted, and automatically indexed based on a defined algorithm.

A software program known as a “robot,” “spider,” or “crawler” scans web pages, follows links between pages and sites, collects information about websites, and indexes this information. This index is a large database of all the websites the crawler has scanned. When a search is performed using a spider-based search engine, the results are provided based on the information in the search engine’s index.

To rank high in search engine results, businesses need to optimize their websites and web pages to ensure that they are being properly indexed by the search engines. Several activities can be initiated in order to influence the information gathered and indexed by robots, spiders, or crawlers. There are many crawler- or spider-based search engines available on the Internet. Some of the popular search engines are Google, Baidu, Bing, and Yahoo.

When a search is performed in a spider-based search engine, the results show both unpaid “organic” listings and paid listings, if any, for the keyword searched. Search engine optimization affects only organic search results. Paid or “sponsored” search results are not affected by SEO. Sponsored results are ads purchased through search engine services such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads. These figures show the anatomy of Google and Bing search engine results.

2.  Human-Edited Web Directories

These directories are Internet search tools that search for information by subject categories. Rather than “robots” or “spiders,” which create directories automatically, human editors create these web directories. A short description along with the URL of the website is submitted to the directory for approval. The search directory then assigns the website to a category enabling the URL to display in search results for that category.

With web directories, the HTML page coding and content of the website seldom directly affect the listing. Directories often provide more targeted results than spider-based search engines. Some examples of popular human-edited web directories for businesses include Dmoz, Business.com, Best of the Web Directory, and Starting Point Directory.

For SEO purposes, a website should be optimized to gain high ranking in spider-based search engines. However, listings of the website in human-edited web directories also help in the overall SEO ranking.