I love what Lee said about being yourself but staying on message. And Ali was right: choose your goals then plan backward from them.

Twitter is a tree: the more your water, fertilize, and prune it, the stronger it will be.

Here are a few quick tips:

· Actively prune inactive and spam accounts to keep the number of people you follow less than the number who follow you.
· Talk to thought leaders, especially people who have more followers than you. Engaging them in conversation will put you on the radar of all their followers.
· Give public "high fives." Compliment other people's work, writing, products, and thoughts, and 95% of them will like you.
· Use TweetDeck to create custom streams based on the niches you're target, and Buffer App to schedule the delivery of new content. I have to use Buffer; otherwise, I'll sometimes forget to post my stuff!
· Be yourself. I can't stress that one enough.
· Keep in mind that bigger isn't necessarily better. Again, what is your goal? If you're trying to network in your industry, than a smaller following might be appropriate. If you're selling info products, then you'll need lots of people entering your sales funnel.
· Have fun. I believe that people prefer to follow winsome people.
· Stay consistent. Your following will grow steadily as long as you're posting steadily AND engaging people in conversation.
· Be really generous. I believe that people prefer to follow generous people.
· Go read one hundred blog posts about how to grow your Twitter following. By the time you're finished, you'll be the expert.

Come back and teach all of us "experts" something, okay?

Austin

It depends on exactly what your goals are for your account... Are you looking to merely build a following? Do you want to push the followers to purchase from you down the road? Are you looking to build social proof for when clients are vetting you to see if they should work with you? Do you want to use it to drive traffic to other social media? Do you want to become a celebrity?

All of these situations merit different methods if you want to be effective. Let me know exactly what your goals are and I can help.

As you already know, Forbes listed me as one of the "Ten Consultants Who Avoid the BS" and I was named a 2013 "Marketer of the Year" by the American Business Awards. I'm a good person to guide you.

The primary reason someone originally follows you is because you followed them, so your first task is to seek out those interested in what you share and follow them. Retweet what you find most interesting of what they've shared. Interact with them. That is why it is called "social" media.

If you don't tweet at least once a month anyone doing Twitter seriously may unfollow you. Consider feeding content that is most interesting to your followers. Usually that would be similar to what you tweet about, but produced by others. One way to do that is explained in How to Use Twitterfeed http://growmap.com/how-to-use-twitterfeed

There are tips, how-tos, strategies and videos for anyone from beginners to advanced Twitter users at http://growmap.com/twitter-best-practices

If you would like one-on-one training or assistance in learning or setting up any of these strategies give me a call.

I'd suggest not only posting your own original content, but lining/RT'ing that of others, esp. influential people whose content you (and your audience by extension) find compelling. It should also underscore your own message and brand positioning.

Having advised numerous companies on how to solve the "cold-start" problem of creating a new social property, one of the best ways to generate content and acquire an audience is to utilize others' content to tell your own story. You'll get a broader reach and find people of like mind if you ally yourself with others who're already doing some of the heavy lifting.

What's more, talking about yourself gets tedious, but when others tell your story, it's a more compelling read -- and it puts them in position to to reinforce your own story and message, which is ultimately what you want. You cannot get links & followers without first giving and sharing them.

A few tactical ideas to add to all the strategies ones other folks have suggested:

1. Add @mentions to your tweets whenever possible. @mention authors of blog posts you share, companies or publications mentioned in posts you share, individuals who might find whatever you're sharing interesting -- Force yourself to include an @mention or even two in each tweet. If you can't figure out how to include at least one, your tweet might not be all that valuable to your readers anyhow. (Unless you're offering, for example, straight-up tips based on your own knowledge.)

2. For individuals, I suggest a "notice-me list." Add folks to a private list who you want to notice you for whatever reason, and look for opportunities to RT their tweets, @reply, participate in their conversations, etc. This does two things: A. It forces you to narrow down who you truly want to connect with on Twitter, right down to individuals, and B. It helps you be more strategic about how to reach those targets.

Here's a post with more detail: http://alexisgrant.com/2012/09/19/use-this-twitter-technique-to-make-big-things-happen/

I also offer a Twitter course with daily tips like the ones above: alexisgrant.com/twitterpower

Cheers!
@alexisgrant

Hi

I can recommend the following :

- if you go to conferences, publish blog posts or keynotes, or comment online, make sure to add your twitter handle
- add your twitter handle in your email signature and business cards
- make sure your description is good. You can say : "I answer topics about management, journalism, and public relations in... every friday 2 to 4pm"
- i also find that my followers number (> 4000 currently) increases dramatically when I go to events or conferences. So make sure you advertise your twitter there. Use hashtags, live tweet the content of the event, comment on those who tweet as well.

Happy tweeting !

The number of followers that you have tells you how many people you can hope to reach semi-regularly with your content, so the more followers you have, the more people who are hopefully being exposed to your messaging on a regular basis. Twitter engagement, however, in many cases can matter even more. Your engagement rate is going to tell how relevant your content is to your target audience, which is a wildly important metric that too many brands either overlook or undervalue. Keep in mind, too, that engagement on Twitter is enormously valuable when it comes to building a relationship with individual members of your target audience. It also doesn't hurt that engagement on your tweets can act as powerful social proof.
When you want to measure Twitter engagement, Twitter Analytics can provide most of the reporting that you need. Twitter's analytics has gotten a big overhaul in the last few years, and it now makes it exceptionally easy to find your engagement rate. When you look at your “Top Tweets,” you'll be able to see the number of impressions each tweet received and the number of engagements it received. Google Analytics has in-depth reporting that can tell you not only that users are coming from Twitter to your site, but also what they’re doing once they’re there. This can help you not only monitor clicks, but see the ROI, value, and the off-site impact that the engagement is providing.
If you want other users to engage with your content, a good way to start is to always interact with their first. When you respond to other users or engage with their content, they’ll be more likely to pay attention to what you’re posting, too. This can also help to build social proof over time, which is valuable across all social media marketing platforms. We are all forced to keep our tweets relatively brief automatically, with Twitter limiting our posts to 280 characters. This can be challenging enough as it is but limiting our posts just a little more can increase engagement. When at this length, users will have enough room to briefly add in their own thoughts or hashtags, while still referring to you. If you were to use all 280, on the other hand, users would have to edit your tweet and cut it down so they could add their text, and for many, this is just too much work. If you want to get clicks to your site, the best way to do so is to put links in your Tweets. While you want to share links to your most valuable content, sending traffic to your site, you also want to share content from others, too. Even better, it can build relationships between you and your users and other industry leaders whose content you are sharing, and they might later share your content in return. This can help increase engagement and send more traffic and new visitors to your site as a bonus.
This can be particularly challenging for large brands or brands that have a large amount of engagement but doing your best to respond in some way when a user tweets to you can go a long way. Responding when someone tweets you not only increases the chance that they will respond in some way to your reply, but also that they will engage with your posts in the future. Just like with Facebook, there will be certain times of the day or days of the week when more of your users will be active on the site or more likely to engage with your content. By being able to find those peak hours and posting during them, you will get more views and you’ll be more likely to increase engagement and clicks on your post. Most studies were consistent in the findings that posting during day hours yielded the most engagement and highest CTRs. Conversational Ads are currently in beta so not everyone has them just yet, but some people do, and I think they are going to be a powerful tool to drive engagement. Conversational Ads are designed purely to increase engagement and brand influence. Part of the reason these can be so powerful is that you are not just getting engagement on your post, but your paid post will ideally spawn and inspire multiple organic posts that are tied to your brand.
Social media, for many, has become an environment where many users are inclined to share every thought that pops into their heads. While non-brand users can get away with letting the world know that they cannot decide if they want a coke or lemonade, brands definitely cannot. Not only do hashtags offer the benefit of helping a relevant audience find you when they search the hashtag you are using, but they can also increase engagement. This makes sense, considering the additional eyes you may get, as well as hashtags, fit into the culture of Twitter usage. Whether you’re using a specific, branded hashtag or one that’s just relevant to your audience or industry, you should aim to always have one on each tweet. Tapping into trending topics via a popular hashtag is also a great way to increase both engagement and impressions.

82% of Twitter users watch video content on the social media platform. It’s also good to note that studies have shown that native video on Twitter tends to drive significantly more engagement than those from third-party players. Videos are dynamic, and it only makes sense they can drastically increase engagement and CTRs. If you post too many, you’ll not only see your engagement not increase, but you’ll also likely see it drop pretty quickly. Multiple case studies have shown that tweeting between 1 and 3 times a day was the ideal frequency for brands and offered the highest engagement levels. Once they posted 4 or more in a day, however, engagement decreases. This will increase the number of audience members who might see your posts, helping to increase engagement because of it. You only have 280 characters to get a click and engagement, so you want to be as to-the-point as you can be to get relevant clicks while still accurately describing your content in a way that’s alluring relevant readers.

This is one of the most classic engagement-building tactics in the marketing book, but it is still making this list because it still consistently works. The first offers the opportunity to learn what your customers think while simultaneously promoting your product, and the second is an easy way to build engagement with users and help promote a relationship with them. This Tweet stands out and is a great way to increase engagement and get clicks on their link. Not only can this increase engagement, asking questions about what your customers want can provide valuable insight into your audience that could cost a lot of money to get through market research. On Twitter, even talking about or tagging an industry leader or peer can be enough to get extra eyes and engagement on your post. Again, this can also help build relationships with big names in your industry, and they could be more inclined to share some of your content or posts later on, likely helping you to get more engagement when they do. Twitter Cards offer an opportunity to add in more content to your tweet, whether that is a summary card, photo card, product card, or any of their other options. It will make your tweet larger, garnering more attention to it, and makes it more dynamic and richer. You do not need your whole website address to be listed as long as users are clicking. Some services and software, like Buffer or different social sharing bars, will automatically shorten the link to your content when they post it.

One of the things they are doing to make these improvements is to prioritize more live video. This will help you rank higher in the algorithm, gaining priority in users' feeds, whether they are looking at their Top Tweets or the latest tweets. And of course, the higher in the algorithm you are, the better chance you have at driving more significant engagement.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath