The Ultimate Content Strategy for Twitter - Grow Your Followers From 0 to 1000 in 25 Days

Introduction to Content Strategy for Twitter – by Adam Paciorek

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Adam Paciorek is a serial entrepreneur and a social media expert.  CEO of Altico LTD, author of “How to get 1000 Real Twitter Followers in 25 Days or Less. A Step by Step Formula” and social media marketing consultant for some really big brands. Twitter has become one of the most successful means of communication for companies – both huge international corporations as well as much smaller local/niche businesses. It facilitates finding new customers and nurturing good relations with the existing ones. One of the most attractive features of Twitter is the fact that the vast majority of users there are open to interact with others, even if they never met in real life. It is a network where users come for new information.

Summary: A strategy to go from 0 to 1000 followers in 30 days:

1. Open your Twitter account and fill in your profile.
2. Good Tweet practices: Prepare 10-15 posts per week upfront and schedule them using Postfity.
3. Content: Use native content that provides value to your target audience - g. tips how to solve their problems, useful information, industry news, interesting tips. Use the 3:1 useful content: promotion ratio -75% of your posts should be useful information, 25% should promote your products or services.
4. Hashtags: Use 2-3 hashtags (#yourkeyword) per Tweet. The hashtag has to describe your content exactly (so no related hashtags that “fall into the same category” but are not actually applicable to your tweet. Tweets that are nothing but a collection of hashtags generally get very little engagement, so don’t waste your time on tweets like that.
5. Images: Use visuals in Twitter format - a tweet with a picture, GIF or video will always outperform a tweet that is just text. The minimum size for image is 600 x 335 Larger images (such as 1200 x 675) will look better when clicked to expand. Whatever size you choose, make sure the ratio stays 16:9. Maximum image size is 5MB. Use Canva, Relay That or to create the right sizes.
6. Find your target audience: find 100 established profiles in your niche and follow them.  
7. Follow the followers of these profiles using com
8. From the top right section choose an icon showing two arrows pointing down. Then choose “By @user’s followers”, copy the name from previous point and click “Search”.
9. You will be then shown a table with all the followers of that account. Have a look and click “+Follow List” next to each account that looks interesting to you. Once you are done adding to list, click “View List on Twitter” button at the bottom right part of the page. You will be taken back to Twitter to manually follow those accounts there. This extra step is enforced by Twitter which is currently against many automations. This way you can follow around 100 accounts per cycle.
10. Pay attention to the profiles of your competitors and reach out to their followers.
11. Find relevant profiles your target group follows and join conversations that feature hashtags (a hashtag, written with a # symbol followed by a keyword, is used to mark a topic on Twitter. It allows people to easily follow information they are interested in) relevant for your business. Use a free tool called Tweetdeck to manage them.
12. Unfollow users who do not follow you back - also using Tweepi.com. You can do it just after logging into Tweepi’s dashboard and clicking “XX don't follow you”. Remember to start from the end of the list as those users had the longest time to follow you back.
13. Follow new users every 2-4 days and unfollow the ones that did not respond every 5-7 days.
14. Repeat daily.

How to find your target customers on Twitter?

You will use two methods: (finding profiles that your target audience already follows) finding relevant profiles your target group follows already and joining conversations that feature hashtags relevant for your business. Just in case it is not clear - a hashtag (written with a # symbol followed by a keyword) is used to mark a topic on Twitter. It allows people to easily follow information they are interested in. Those can be anything, like #Baking #London #WorldCup #Startup etc. In order to quickly view those hashtags in one place, we will use a free tool called Tweetdeck (https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/). It allows you to create streams for the terms you want to interact with. It is very intuitive and will save you a lot of time. Just use the “+” icon on the left side, choose “Search” and insert the hashtag you want to monitor. You can add as many streams as you need. Now, once your account has some content on it, let’s see how to grow the followers count.

How to grow the number of your Twitter followers?

The process is simple:

1. Find established profiles where your potential followers already are, and follow them. Chances are that, if your profile is also attractive, they will follow you back. Pay attention to the profiles of your competitors and reach out to their followers. They have already assembled a group of people interested in the products from your category, making them ideal for you to connect to.  Believe me, your competitors and other businesses in your niche will probably do the same with your followers in the future.Tweepi.com is a great tool for this process. In a nutshell, it allows you to bulk follow and unfollow users who already are connected to other users you specify.How do you do this?
2. Create an account on Tweepi.com - You need to be logged into your Twitter at the same time – you can do it on another tab in your browser. Then click on create account button and follow the standard steps.
3. Bulk Follow users - Go to Twitter and choose the user, whose followers you want to engage with. Copy their twitter name (the one starting with @...)
4. Go back to tweepi.com and login.
5. From the top right section choose an icon showing two arrows pointing down. Then choose “By @user’s followers”, copy the name from previous point and click “Search”
6. You will be then shown a table with all the followers of that account.
7. Have a look and click “+Follow List” next to each account that looks interesting to you. You can use the “Add Criteria” functionality to narrow down results, to parameters like location, number of followers, last activity etc. I would recommend setting up “Last Tweeted” to be newer than 5 days as we are interested in profiles that actually use Twitter.
8. Once you are done adding to list, click “View List on Twitter” button at the bottom right part of the page. You will be taken back to Twitter to manually follow those accounts there. This extra step is enforced by Twitter who is currently against many automations. This way you can follow around 100 accounts per cycle.
9. Engage in conversations by researching relevant hashtags and visiting individual profiles. That will be the majority of your time. Do it daily and you will see how your account will grow. Tweetdeck will be very useful here.
10. Unfollow users who do not follow you back - Also using Tweepi.com. You can do it just after logging into Tweepi’s dashboard and clicking “XX don't follow you”. Remember to start from the end of the list as those users had the longest time to follow you back.
11. Repeat.

I would suggest you follow new users every 2-4 days and unfollow the ones that did not respond every 5-7 days. That way you will stay under Twitter’s automations detection.

Now, after a month or so, you will have this initial audience for your Twitter marketing.

You will have a good starting point to promote your products and services while keep growing your community. Remember to monitor your analytics to determine what content works best for your audience. Quick note on buying followers - this is never a good idea. Having an account followed by hundred of thousands but hardly anyone interacting with you does not look good. It actually can put genuinely interested people off.

What to post? - Content strategy for Twitter explained

Twitter as a medium moves so fast that it is natural that a lot of interesting and relevant information gets overlooked and missed. Some types of messages are naturally repeatable. You can say “Good morning....” every day or wish your followers a nice weekend. What I suggest doing is creating one document (a simple text document or spreadsheet) where you keep the messages you can reuse. While managing your account you will constantly be adding more model tweets to the list. You can organize them into “regular”(good mornings etc.), “links to my site”(links to articles) , “neutral” (quotes, links to nice content on the web) and “current” (relating to your current promotional activity in your business – an upcoming event, a new product that you will release, etc.).Keeping it all in one place will also show you if different types of tweets are well balanced (“give, give, give, ask” principle).

Twitter post scheduling tools

Now, before you start any outreach activities to find new followers, it is always good to prepare some posts upfront/ That way, visitors who land on your page see clear reasons to follow you. You can use a tool like Postfity for it. It allows you to prepare posts in advance and then schedule them to be posted every couple of hours. You don’t need to be actually at your keyboard when they go up. Postfity allows you to schedule tools across all social channels mentioned here, not only Twitter. It makes it a very good investment (paid plans start from $10 per month). It also has a great blog that presents latest news from the world of Social Media Marketing as well as tools to quickly create graphics. Before you move forward, schedule 10-15 tweets in Postfity. Those can be links to interesting articles and your comments to them, links to your blog, your products or interesting quotes. Keep in mind the give, give, give, ask ratio where roughly 25% of your posts should promote your products or services and 75% should be neutral and useful information. Over time you will develop a habit of keeping your Postfity queue topped up - making sure there is a number of tweets always there to be posted later. That will give you time to focus on current conversations. One more thing to keep in mind - There is nothing wrong in repeating a tweet from time to time, even more than once a day.

How to grow your business using Twitter by Terya Serucco

About Terya Founder of Social Valkyrie – Helping you win the battle for attention on social media Terya graduated with honours from her Master degree in Business. After several years of walking the beaten path up the career ladder, she found her feet itching to wander in other directions. She discovered her calling in social media. It combines her passion for writing and creativity with her keen business insight and geeky love of statistics. She founded her social media agency Social Valkyrie - named after the fierce Valkyrie warriors from Norsk mythology - to help business owners win the battle for attention on social media. Terya is convinced that social media is by far the best and most fun way to reach people and win clients, no matter what kind of business you’re in.

Find out more at www.socialvalkyrie.com | Facebook: @SocialValkyrie fb.me/SocialValkyrie | Twitter: @SocialValkyrie twitter.com/socialvalkyrie | Instagram: @SocialValkyrie Instagram.com/social_valkyrie

Highly actionable marketing strategies to win fans and gain clients on Twitter

Twitter is an often overlooked or ignored social media platform by businesses. And while it’s true that its user base is considerably smaller than those of Facebook and Instagram, there are fans to be won here, too. There are fewer businesses on Twitter, which means less competition. Combine that with the fact that high quality, engaging content is sometimes hard to come by on Twitter, and your opportunity to stand out and gain a large following has just become a lot easier than on crowded platforms like Instagram. And no, Twitter is not only the place where people share what they’ve had for breakfast or discuss the latest news (although that happens a lot, too). Twitter users are some of the most active and engaged social media users. They can be a goldmine of insight. You have the chance to get to know your target audience, ask them direct questions and improve your offering based on what the customer wants to spend their dollars on. So let’s dive into it. For the busy entrepreneur out there (and doesn’t that include all of us), here are the top strategies that set your foundation right for building a winning corporate presence on Twitter.

Top 5 Twitter strategies to help your business grow

#1 Consistently provide high quality content

This may sound like Captain Obvious at his finest, but too many businesses use every tweet as an advertisement. Newsflash: nobody is waiting to be sold to. As with all social media, and perhaps even a bit more with Twitter, it is a long term game. Your tweets need to add value and genuinely interest people. You can add a promotional tweet once in a while, but always give more than you ask. Tell people interesting facts about your company, staff, yourself, your product or service, the process, something behind the scenes. Aim to entertain, inform, intrigue, inspire or motivate, rather than sell. This will have a double effect. First, it will help you stand out and make it easier to grow your following. Second, when you add value and post consistently, you will gain the credibility and trust of your followers, making them more likely to purchase from you. And last but not least, it will establish you as an expert. When people are in need of someone with your expertise, you will become the first person/business they think of. And because they already trust you, they are also likely to recommend you to their network. Only THEN, after you add value to the life of your follower, you can go for the direct Call to Action. Using this process, you will sell a lot more effectively than if you only stand on your virtual soapbox shouting at people to buy.

#2 Post native content

What does that mean? It means that you post your tweets specifically in and for Twitter. Don’t set up an automatic system to share links to your Instagram or Facebook accounts on Twitter. People are on Twitter because, surprise, they like using Twitter. Not only do the links to other platforms make your account look hopelessly boring (and lazy), but you are also highly unlikely to get anyone to click them. It will get you crickets in engagement, followers, trust-building and sales. So upload and post actual content on Twitter, and skip the link sharing.

#3 Use visuals. Then use visuals in Twitter format

A tweet with a picture, GIF or video will always outperform a tweet that is just text. You’ll get more views, link-clicks, retweets, and likes. This is true even if that visual is just an image of text. There are tons of apps and simple online editors which you can use to turn your text into an image and voilá, you get more attention.The next step is to make sure your visuals for Twitter are in the format that this platform requires. The minimum size to get an image to look good in the Twitter timeline is 600 x 335 pixels. Of course, larger images (such as 1200 x 675) will look better when clicked to expand. Whatever size you choose, make sure the ratio stays 16:9. The maximum image size is 5MB.I know, it is a pain to have to create your content in different formats. But if you’re going to grow your business through Twitter, you need to pay it the attention it deserves. As I mentioned before, many businesses are not putting in the effort to stand out on Twitter. This simple strategy will help you to be that one exception that followers will flock to. Tip: Use Canva, Relay That or other software to easily create the right sizes without effort.

#4 Use hashtags wisely

Twitter users are very particular about the use of hashtags. Unlike Instagram, where more is better, Twitter etiquette dictates that your hashtag has to describe your content exactly (so no related hashtags that “fall into the same category” but are not actually applicable to your tweet), and best practice is to use only 2 or 3 hashtags. Tweets that are nothing but a collection of hashtags generally get very little engagement, so don’t waste your time on tweets like that.

#5 Identify and follow your target audience

So far, all strategies had to do with the content you put out there. That’s because the content of your account is the backbone of any success you may or may not achieve here. Clickbait, spam, aggressive selling, an overload of hashtags, boring “notice board” tweets and otherwise crappy content make any other strategy useless, because it chases away whatever follower you manage to attract. However, if you’ve got your content right, you’re ready to start growing your following. How? Simple: follow people. Not just anyone, but those who you believe will be interested in your product/service. Those people will follow you back if they really are interested. You can figure out who is most likely to follow you back by first getting a crystal clear image of your Ideal Client is: where they live, how old they are, what kind of jobs and hobbies they have, and most importantly, who else they may follow on Twitter. Are you a sports equipment company? Find Twitter accounts of big sports teams in your area. Are you a coach? Follow fans of personal development accounts. Do you have a plumbing company? Find accounts related to home ownership or DIY stores. Advanced pro tip: only follow people who liked or retweeted recent tweets. This will get you the most active followers and helps to avoid following inactive accounts. Have you checked all the boxes for the above tips already? Are you looking for that one advanced technique that will be the game changer for you? Then keep reading. These are for you.

Pro Strategy #1: Pin a tweet that captures email addresses

This is a combination of several tactics. First, a pinned tweet. A pinned tweet is a tweet that you permanently “stick” to the top of your Twitter profile, so it is the first thing to be seen by everyone who visits your profile. This is a great opportunity to make sure all your profile visitors get the message you want out there most. Second, a giveaway. Giving something of value away for free (anything related to your product /service/company, such as an ebook, access to a video, a mini-course, etc.) is a great way to collect email addresses of people clearly interested in your business. You can either post a link to a lead page where they can leave their email address to get the freebie, or, third, you can use Twitter Cards.

Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards are only available for business accounts, so upgrade your account first. This doesn’t cost you anything unless you start using ads. A business account gives you the option to offer your giveaway via a Twitter Card. For everyone that clicks the download button a Twitter Card, you will automatically receive the officially registered email address of that account. It’s a very fast e-mail list builder, and the perfect way to grow your business using Twitter.

Pro Strategy #2: Join a Twitter party

Twitter parties are basically conversations on Twitter with hundreds if not thousands of people at the same time, all using the same special hashtag so they can follow the chat. Look up #TwitterParty on the platform to see some examples. Some parties give out prizes, some simply serve to bring people together around a certain topic. Joining in the conversation is a fantastic way to gain massive exposure in a very short amount of time, and to make a lot of new friends who are interested in your topic.