When I first started using Twitter, I made a big \u2013 yet common \u2013 mistake. I followed only people who followed me. This resulted in a stream full of spam and total silence whenever I posed a question or shared a link.<\/p>\n
When I reached about 1,000 followers, I decided to take a proactive approach to Twitter. I began to seek and follow people in my industry \u2013 people who care about the same topics I care about. Once this happened, I generated some great opportunities through the social networking platform.<\/p>\n
Below are five ways you can develop a targeted following on Twitter:<\/p>\n
\u2022\tDon\u2019t overlook your contacts<\/strong> \u2013 You can start building a targeted following by encouraging your contacts to engage with you on Twitter. Include a link to your Twitter account in your email signature, on your website, on your blog and in all your other social media accounts.<\/p>\n \u2022\tConduct a search<\/strong> \u2013 As Twitter grows, it\u2019s becoming easier to find people who are tweeting about your hot topics. You can use the Twitter search function, Twitter directories or a third-party application such as TweetAdder<\/a> to search for people to follow. Before you follow someone, just be sure to check the date of the person\u2019s last tweet. Since 73% of Twitter\u2019s users are inactive, you want to make sure you follow active users.<\/p>\n \u2022\tUse hashtags<\/strong> \u2013 Many people think hashtags are just for promoting events. However, you should add them to as many of your tweets as possible. People search for hashtags related to their industries and will follow you if you\u2019re using their favourite hashtags.<\/p>\n \u2022\tEngage in conversations<\/strong> \u2013 The most important thing you should do on Twitter is engage in one-on-one conversations every day. You can reply to someone\u2019s tweet, answer a question or give someone information they might find valuable. Doing this helps you build relationships and establishes you as an expert in your industry.<\/p>\n \u2022\tWeed out spammers<\/strong> \u2013 As your following grows, you\u2019ll find that spammers will manage to sneak past you. I recently cut over 10% of my followers using TwitSweeper<\/a>, a service that checks your account for spammers and gives you the option to block them. Weeding out spammers clears junk from your stream and provides you with much more relevant content \u2013 you won\u2019t have to read tweets about teeth-whitening products!<\/p>\n If you use these tactics, you\u2019ll discover you don\u2019t need a large following to grow an active and engaged community. I\u2019m currently helping a nonprofit organization build a presence on Twitter and am careful to follow only people who are discussing their cause. Although the organization\u2019s new account has fewer than 200 followers, their following is very active. The organization gets responses to almost all their tweets, and they are reaching their initial goal of engaging people in conversation around their cause on Twitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I first started using Twitter, I made a big \u2013 yet common \u2013 mistake. I followed only people who followed me. This resulted in a stream full of spam and total silence whenever I posed a question or shared a link. When I reached about 1,000 followers, I decided to take a proactive approach … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,339],"tags":[340,342,341,343,244],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-rachelfoster","tag-following","tag-search","tag-targeted","tag-tools","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":560,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions\/560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}