For many marketers, Twitter is an essential tool for staying in touch with potential customers, and marketing new products to them. While only 18% of adults in the US use Twitter, many of those users check it very frequently, which makes it one of the top social networks. Getting people to follow your account is essential, but equally important is keeping them around.
According to recent studies, there are some things that people can do to help keep their Twitter audience engaged so they don’t stop following. In addition to simply keeping people from unfollowing, these tips can actually help encourage Twitter users to check their account more frequently, which gives you additional opportunities to build a strong relationship with them.
Add Images & Videos
140 characters isn’t very many, so it is important to provide as much content and value as you can for your twitter followers. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so make sure you’re adding images, videos and other types of content to your twitter feed. For example, an infographic can display far more content than you could ever fit in 140 normal characters. A YouTube video is also a great way to give people more than the 140 character limit. While you don’t have to do it with every Tweet, make sure you’re account is using all the different types of content possible.
Do More than Tweet Links to Your Website
Even if your primary goal is to get people to visit your website, you should do more than simply tweeting about every blog post you make. You need to build a relationship with your followers before they will follow all the links you post. Posting tweets without links is a great way to show your followers that you’re not just trying to manipulate them into taking a specific action.
Don’t Flood your Feed
Finding the right balance when it comes to how often you tweet can be difficult. While you want to post often enough that people know who you are, you also don’t want to flood your feed with hundreds of tweets. A recent survey found that of people who stopped using Twitter, 76% of them reported that one of the reasons was that they saw too much content. Keep the tweets to one or two per day and you’ll get much better results.
Don’t get Fake Followers
When marketers buy twitter followers so their stats look more impressive it ends up backfiring on them. When I see an account from someone I’ve never heard of with 5 million followers, I know something is fishy. In addition, there are services out there now that can check what percentage of the followers are fake. When people see you have to use fake followers to try to gain credibility, they won’t want to keep following your account. It is far better to have 100 legit followers than 100,000 fake ones.
Don’t Be Repetitive
Another major problem with Twitter is that people seem to post the same things over and over again. While retweeting someone else’s content is ok occasionally, it shouldn’t be something you do every day. Try to publish as many original and unique tweets as possible to keep your account fresh. This will help ensure people want to keep following you, and it will also give you the appearance of an authority in your market.
