Table of Contents
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Meta Desc
Getting more followers is something every creator aspires to. And, they are right: An online audience is a stem cell that could become any cell.
Meta Title
The Complete Guide To Growing Your Twitter Audience
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Getting more followers is something every creator aspires to.
And, they are right:
An online audience is a stem cell that could become any cell. It allows you to build anything out of it later down the road.
Building an audience comes before everything. It’s a true superpower.
Your online presence will be the currency of the future. Doing this right will set you up for an exciting and prosperous future.
These days, Twitter has become one of the most sought-after platforms to grow an audience online.
Twitter has become one of the most popular platforms creators flocks to grow an online audience.
So, why do creators want to grow an audience?
- It speaks to the human desire of having influence by increasing dopamine of getting *liked*
- Having a decent-sized audience makes it easier to launch products and earn a living
- To build a community of like-minded people
Knowing what drives creators to put themselves out there is one thing. Secondly, we need to take a look at the main problems creators run into.
With all the tools that are available and the fact that everyone wants to become a creator, it’s easy to understand that the competition is fiercer than ever before. Being creators ourselves and active members of the community, we have a good understanding of the common problems creators face at the beginning of their journey:
- Not knowing what to talk about
- Not having the confidence
- Feeling overwhelmed by the busyness of the Twitter timeline.
- Lacking the consistency
- Not knowing how to connect with other creators
But, we’re here to help. This guide breaks down the process and strategies to need to utilize to grow your Twitter-follower count:
Part 1 – Understand yourself to grow a unique audience
To build an audience that’s uniquely yours, you have to start defining the topics you want to create content around.
In any industry, there are two groups of people: the unknown beginners and the well-established leaders.
The difference between the two groups is the focus. Most creators try to break through by focusing on many topics at the same time. But, this type of focus is actually no focus, we’d like to call it diluted focus. Most of the content of these creators doesn’t stick with their audience.
To become sticky with their audience, creators need to identify their niche and put in the work to become an expert in it.
Many people wonder: “How can I find my niche?”
Identifying your uniqueness is easier said than done. The things you’ve done in the past and your calling of the future are often a hint of where your uniqueness lies. Branding expert Rory Vaden often says:
You are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.
And, that’s exactly what you want to get clear on. Answer the following 6 questions to discover your uniqueness.
- What’s the problem you want to solve?
- What’s the thing you’re passionate about?
- What do you research or study?
- Where do you have results or actual experience?
- What business do you want to be in?
- What would your audience be willing to buy from you?
Once you’re clear on what makes you unique and what lights up your fire, all the distractions dissipate.
Finally, you see that a small opening in the wall has appeared — an opening that is ready and waiting for you to walk right through. Now that you’re clear about what you want to build, it’s time to build confidence to show up online.
Part 2 – Build confidence and defeat imposter syndrome
The life of a creator is hard. The path is not set in stone and obstacles will come up out of nowhere.
If you’re lucky, you will make it through.
Especially in the beginning, you compare yourself to others putting their content out and you think by yourself:
I can never be as good as them. How can I build an audience from scratch and thrive as a creator? I’m not an expert in my field.
But, you are.
In the first part of this guide, we helped you define your uniqueness. Now it’s time to start owning that.
No one is uniquely you. Not a single human being brings the expertise, skills, and personal traits you bring. Share your real story. Help those who go through the same struggles as you did. Give the advice you needed to hear 6 months ago.
Creators often hold themselves back from pressing publish. Why? Because they’re worried about what their friends, family, or co-workers think?
If that’s you, we’ve got good news for you:
Just because people care about you, doesn’t mean they also care about your work, your ideas, and the brand you’re trying to build. The fact that you attended the same high school, share the same group of friends, or share the same DNA, doesn’t mean your interests are aligned for the rest of your life.
It isn’t whether they love you or not. It has nothing to do with you and your success.
They’re unable to appreciate your effort and celebrate your success because of their own insecurities. Those people can’t be them, without you staying you. They need you to stay the same, so they can look up to you and be something. We’re always told that only certain people can create the lives that they want. Seeing you grow makes them feel uncomfortable.
So, stop caring what others would say.
They belong to the herd — the 99% of people that don’t take control of their online persona. You’re not one of them. You’re a person that wants to take control over their online identity. You want to build an audience, and establish a name for yourself because you know you’ve got something to share that’s valuable to others.
Now you know that the only barrier to sharing your content online and growing your following is inside of your head.
Instead of staying in an environment that is unsupportive, you enter the internet and share your work with total strangers. The fact that you’re reading this, means you possess the ability to reach the rest of your world with the device at your fingertips.
What’s the worst thing that can happen?
Nobody cares or even sees it.
The best thing that can happen?
Your work changes someone’s day, or better, life.
It’s the piece of advice the other person desperately needed to see, and you delivered it. You don’t have to be a financial expert to understand that the risk-to-reward ratio of publishing your content online is very high. Building an audience comes after consistently providing value to others.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. To grow a strong following online, you start small:
- post 1 tweet
- reply 1 time
- send 1 dm a day.
Do this for 30 days straight and watch your life transform. It’s not rocket science.
Spoiler: the more you do, the faster you grow.
Part 3 – Connect and engage with the right creators
Social media is called that way for a reason.
You want to be social.
Yes, we know, sounds terrifying, right?
But, hear us out.
Your audience will grow faster when you bundle forces with other creators. You want to build genuine connections on social media without faking it. You want to spend time finding like-minded creators, connecting with them, and building a community.
You do this by engaging and connecting.
Engagement happens when you comment or share other people’s content. Connecting happens in private conversations.
Our rule of thumb to grow your audience in the beginning:
Spend 90% of your time on Twitter engaging and connecting with like-minded people, and 10% of your time on creating.
When we talk about the first element, the engagement part, let’s take a closer look at how you can keep up with your favorite creators without feeling overwhelmed.
There are many solutions, but for this article, we limit ourselves to two options:
- Twitter Lists (free)
- The Engage-section within Tweet Hunter (paid)
Twitter Lists allow you to customize, organize and prioritize the Tweets you see in your timeline. You can choose to join Lists created by others on Twitter.
The Engage section inside Tweet Hunter takes the principle of Lists and adds the possibility to interact with your favorite creators without going to Twitter. You don’t have to go to the timeline and risk getting distracted. Engaging has never been easier this way.
By now, we know that unique and valuable content is important, but in the early stages of your creators’ journey, connection is more important. People come for the content but stay for the connection. And, we connect with other creators through DMs on Twitter.
For most creators, the most terrifying part of all.
“Wtf should I send?”
We’ve all been there, but you have to trust us on this one:
Every strong connection we have on Twitter started in the DM.
To build these genuine relationships with your audience, you have to understand yourself. Luckily, we’ve spent time understanding ourselves in part 1 of this guide. Once you know what makes you unique, we can dive into the tactical approach.
We can define 8 different tactics to initiate a great conversation through DMs:
- Find: when someone new follows you, send them a DM to ask how they got in touch with your content
- Fun: say something funny or witty about their banner, bio or recent content
- Future: people on Twitter love to talk about their projects, so ask them about their goals or the things they work on
- Favorite: if a follower recently engaged with your content, ask them about their favorite part
- Usage: Start a conversation by asking for what reason the other creator uses Twitter for. Is it business, personal, or a combination? Understanding why your audience uses Twitter is super helpful in building great relationships.
- Compliment: Everyone likes to get a compliment. Tell that person you like their banner, admire their bio, or really love their recent content. Most likely, it will make their day. We tend to forget how great a compliment can make us feel, so pay it forward.
- Ongoing engagement: It says a lot when certain people often engage with your content: they freaking love it. And, you should thank them for that.
- Mutual connection: The Twitter feed allows you to connect with new and interesting creators through the people you currently are connected with. When you follow a new creator, initiate a conversation by sharing how you got to their profile.
These are the kind of tactics that will work with accounts more or less as big as yours. But people who have a lot of followers are unlikely to answer them. Some do, but it’s a numbers game.
For large accounts, the most powerful approach for starting a DM conversation is to bring value to the table. These people get 10-100 DMs every day, most of which are not going to be useful for them. They won’t reply if you just say you like their work or present what you’ve been working on.
There are different ways of bringing value with your first DM
- Be a client (having purchased whatever that person is selling)
- Give constructive feedback on their work, product, service, landing page, etc.
- Offer a business opportunity
- Offer your services for free
Put yourself in their shoes: if you had 50k followers, why would you take the time out of your busy day to answer someone DM’ing you on Twitter? You probably wouldn’t, unless that person is bringing something to the table, which is usually related to business or learning something new.
Go try these tactics out, one by one, and you’ll be amazed by the interesting conversation you have.
Part 4 – Create a 30-day plan to streamline your content
Growing an online following comes from consistently showing up and putting in the work. Yes, it’s actually hard work.
But, as we aren’t robots, it’s inevitable that there will be days that you *just don’t feel like it*. And for those days, it’s essential to have a system in place to help you out. You want to find something you can commit to for a longer time. We all have different schedules, responsibilities, & places to go. Some thrive in the morning, and others are true night birds.
Once you understand what makes you unique, how to act from a place of confidence and connect with others, it’s time to execute to grow your following. Here’s where the content plan comes into play.
As the name suggests, it’s a plan that allows you to be strategic about your content.
Tweet Hunter currently has two features that help you with generating and scheduling content so that you can spend most of your time engaging and connecting. These features are the “Generate” and “Queue” features.
The first feature, Generate, as the name suggests, generates content that’s inspired by your own content and the content you interact with on Twitter. You can use the examples right away, or use them as a starting point to create a new tweet or thread.
The second feature, Queue, allows you to schedule your content at fixed times. Again, this frees up your time so that you can focus on what you do best: engaging and connecting with like-minded creators. A big bonus of this feature is that it gives you insights into when your followers are most active. This way, you can ensure that your content reaches the biggest audience and has the most impact.
We recommend starting with generating and creating content for at least 7 days and scheduling this at the best time possible. Believe it or not, after three days of seeing your content flow to the Twitter feed without you pulling the trigger at that moment, it’s addictive. Soon you’ll find yourself scheduling your content for the rest of the month or even longer. You can thank us later.
Conclusion
To summarize, growing a following on Twitter is hard work, and consistency is required.
And, the best part?
You can earn your consistency.
It’s earned by doing the work and showing up on the days that you don’t feel like it.
Not because it’s cool to say that. You show up, especially on those days, because you know they will benefit you so much in the future.
The creator’s game is a marathon, not a sprint. Those that come up fast, often fade away quickly, too. You don’t want to become a one-hit-wonder. Show up daily. Just show up.
If you do the work, consistency will come to you and at some point, it’s easier to do the things you should do than to not do it. At that point, it’s not about consistency anymore, but it’s about not breaking the streak.
But, if you break your streak, it’s not a disaster.
Because the creator’s game is not about being perfect and not being able to miss one day ever. It’s about getting back on track easier and faster than before. Because one thing is certain: you will fail. Everyone does it.
Acknowledge that you’re imperfect and will make mistakes. Don’t be too hard on yourself and accuse yourself of not being consistent. Taking the time to plan ahead for those days is pivotal for your journey. Those who are ready will get ahead for sure.
The goal is not to be perfect. The goal is to keep on moving forward.
