Handy Hints To Get Over 100,000 Twitter Followers

What's the secret to Twitter success? If you're not Harry Styles or Coca Cola, you will need help. Step forward, Chris Bolman.

Lesson #1: Target Users with Less than 1,000 Followers  

Trying to get users to engage with you on Twitter? Well with 645 million rivals you may struggle to stand out, especially in the early stage of brand building. Avoid those accounts (where possible) with more than 1,000 followers as they are 62% less likely to follow you than users with under 1,000. 

Lesson #2: Timing is Everything

Research shows an average weekday can generate 14,819 follows vs. an average of 12,952 on a weekend. The difference is presumably because people are more active on their mobiles and computers, trying to distract themselves from work.

Overall, approximately three in four of all follows captured in this data set took place between Monday and Friday with Thursday being the highest day for new follows.

Lesson #3: Twitter Engagement is Continuous

As demonstrated by the engagement chart (based on users in the US), Twitter is always a hive of activity. With 76% of Twitter’s Monthly Active Users (MAUs) on mobile, almost 71% of daily follows happen outside of 9am-5pm, with engagement seeming to be higher in the afternoon, (58% of follows happen between noon and midnight vs. 42% between 12:01am and 11:59am).

Activity seems to pick up between 1:00-1:30 EST, when those in the US on the East coast will be returning from lunch breaks, perhaps checking their twitter feed before returning to their afternoon tasks and meetings while commuters in Europe will just be getting home or children will have finished their homework (or so they say), turning to social media around 7.30pm.

Lesson: #4: Keep It Themed

It probably doesn’t shock that tweeting about social media on social media gets you more attention/followers, but certain themes can offer big returns:

1. Social media itself (“social,” “social media,” “social media marketing”)

2. Sports and games (“game,” “games,” “league,” “sports,” “football,” “soccer”)

3. Business (particularly technology and marketing-related topics and keywords)

4. Personal fulfillment and care (“care,” “health,” “spirituality,” “religion”)

Users of Twitter naturally have a strong positive bias towards social media usage as well as marketing and technology. I applaud you, Upworthy, for giving the Twitter audience what they want. 

Talking about these topics is 93% more likely to attract fresh followers, nearly doubling your engagement potential. 

Lesson #5: Talking About TV Doesn’t Translate

Sending a tweet about the X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent final may get you seen, but it won’t necessarily get you followed. Even more, it could be damaging to your user engagement, tweeting two or more consecutive posts about a TV show reduces your profile’s rate of new follower acquisition by 39% over the next hour. 

This could suggest social TV audiences trend toward broadcasting, not listening, and the quality of conversation is relatively low by engagement standards. 

Photo (cc) Todd Barnard. Some rights reserved.