I have been a massive fan of Twitter ever since I first came across the platform a few years back. I initially loved the fact that it was fast paced and concise… something we all know is not always the case on other platforms with long rambling statuses.
Within a few months I started to really see the benefits of Twitter for both marketing my business and also for networking with other likeminded fitness professional. There are however a few tricks that can help to make Twitter work for you!
Profile
The first thing to look at is your profile on twitter, remember you have seconds to make an impact so make sure that your image is engaging. Your bio should be clear about what you are and what you stand for, this will help visitors decide if they are going to hit the follow button or not. Twitter also allows you to link to one URL that your new found followers can find out more about you, make sure the URL you direct people to is relevant, and most importantly working.
Your Tweets
In order to get people engaging with you, you need to ensure that your tweets are interesting and worth the readers time. So what do we count as engagement on Twitter? There are a number of ways your follows can engage with you, these include hitting the favourite or re-tweet button… or even better replying to you.
If you think of your Tweets as more of headlines in a newspaper, they should be eye catching and make the reader want to find out more (by following any links) or discuss the point with you. A great way to drive engagement is using good quality and relevant images. Research has shown that a Tweet with a good image receives more favourites, re-tweets and clicks than text alone.
Another key aspect of using Twitter is the hash tag. The idea behind the hash tag is to group Tweets on similar topics making them easily searchable. Having a quick look at trending topics and finding commonly used hash tags in the fitness industry can greatly increase the number of people who find your tweets.
Interaction
As in real life people do not like one way conversations. To make your followers keep following you and engaging you should do your very best to reply to messages and Tweets directed at you. By having interactions with your followers you will increase their loyalty to your brand, this will also help to increase your status as a leader in your niche.
Building followers
There are many people out there who will give you a wide range of strategies to build the number of followers you have on Twitter. In my opinion by far the most effective is having great Tweets that people want to share to their followers, who in turn will follow you.
However it is important to think about how you can maximise the views of your Tweets in order to maximise the number of your followers that see each one and therefore the number of re-tweets. Think about the days and times of day that your followers will be on-line, there are a number of tools that can help you find this out such as Sendible or Socialbro.
Many of these tools will also allow you to schedule your tweets so you can preload Tweets to be sent out at particular times. These tools make life so much easier and ensure your Tweets go out at the peak times for your followers.
People love to be mentioned so by using the @ tag to mention people in your Tweets you pull them into the conversation or even start one. This should especially used if you are sharing someone else’s content, so if you were linking to one of my articles I would know you had done it by you using the @Tomforesight tag. I would then be much more likely to favourite or re-tweet the fact you had shared some of my content.
One word of caution, remember it is not all about the number of followers you have but it is more important to have quality. It is better to have a handful of followers who interact and love your content than 1000’s that are silent.
By following the above basic steps you can help to increase your followers on Twitter and start to use it as a tool to build your profile and your business. I have left the number one rule for last though, just be consistent with it… post regularly and keep interacting and your followers will grow in no time!