Five Every Day Actions Grow Your Twitter Followers

I've been on twitter since 2009 and right now my twitter followers are growing at a rate of about 100 new followers a day. While I have many followers, I continue to take several simple and quick actions every day to add to my followers.

1. Refollow

Every day I use a simple tool called Refollow (which I've described in detail before. Follow this link for the details). I use it faithfully because it allows me to follow 800 new people in less than five minutes—but not just anyone—people who are in my target market. I'm targeting individuals who are interested in publishing (books or magazine). It is a critical aspect of using this tool.

About once a week, I'll get an error message that Twitter says I've maxed out my new followers and I can come back tomorrow. I looked and I had only followed about 190 people instead of 800. I've learned to wait about 30 minutes and return to Refollow. Then I repeat the process and follow more followers and the tool begins again to reach new people. Don't believe the error message and persistence pays off with reaching 600 more people than Twitter was going to allow me to reach.

2. Manage Flitter

A second tool I use every day is Manage Flitter. I've also described the use of this tool in detail. Follow the link. I use this tool to eliminate people who have not set up their profile, don't speak English, and are fake or spam followers.  Also it allows me to quickly unfollow people who are not following me back.

3. Scan Your Twitter Home Feed

About once a day, I will scan through home feed on Twitter. I do it on my desktop computer so it is easy to see. I'm looking to block porn, non-English tweets (non-Roman scripts) and anything offensive. This process is quick and I page through my feed. I know I don't catch everything but it is something simple that I do to maintain my followers.

4. Respond to Direct Messages

I use Hootsuite to monitor my direct messages from followers and respond to them. This tool is free and easy to use. The engagement is one of the key reasons to use Twitter. Also notice my Twitter profile includes my personal email address. Often my new followers will email me for help—and I always respond point them to my blog, my free teleseminars, my other free writing resources.  My personal goal is to answer these emails within 24 hours and often I do it quicker. These writers are surprised that I answer since most publishing communication goes into a black hole (no answer) and I provide solid writing resources.

5. Tweet Valuable Content (mostly not mine)

I use Hootsuite to schedule my tweets almost every hour throughout the working hours of a day. Throughout my day I read content of other people and I pass along this valuable content about publishing to my followers. My active tweeting builds followers (and it will for you as well). Also notice for almost every tweet, I include an image (which is part of Hootsuite). It's been proven using images gets more attention for your tweets. 

These simple actions do not consume a lot of time but the fact I do it every day (repeatedly) builds traction and a following on Twitter. I've recently gone over 158,000 followers and have no plans to stop growing my following. You can follow the same steps with consistent action. It will give you more credibility with other writers, catch the attention of literary agents and editors—and help you in ways you can't even imagine. 

I spend most of my days working as an acquisitions editor at a New York publisher, Morgan James. If I can do these steps, then you can find a few minutes to do them. Be encouraged and let me know how it is working for you.

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Social Media Without Draining Your Day

How in the world, have I tweeted more than seventeen thousand times? Yes, that is an accurate accounting of my activity on Twitter. 

First, I was an early adapter and have been on twitter for seven or eight years. While there are times when I have not blogged or put out my newsletter or other ways to touch my audience, there are very few days that I haven't sent out consistent information about publishing on twitter. 

The result is that I've built a large following on this platform. Publishers are looking for authors who have a large and on-going social media presence. I've often written about platform-building ideas and even have a free Ebook on this topic (use the link to get it immediately).
 
Social media doesn't have to consume your day and hours of time. It can—but doesn't have to do so. It does not drain my day and I'm active in the social media area. For example, I have over 92,000 twitter followers. I want to give you several tools and insights of what I'm doing to consistently have a growing social media presence yet I do it with focused effort.
I tweet daily. In fact, I tweet several times a day. 

Last year I wrote about how I pass along the various reading that I'm doing in the publishing area. Follow this link to read it. I am always looking for great content to pass to my followers. I am consistent in doing this and it only takes seconds to accomplish.
 
Over the years, I've made a number of online resources and free telseminars. I keep a list of these tweets in a small file. Throughout my day, I will cut and paste these tweets into Hootsuite and they go out to my followers. Because I've compiled these tweets into a file, they are easy and quick to find and do not take long to use. 

In addition, I've told twitter to paste all of my tweets on my Facebook profile. While I do not spend much time on Facebook, people regularly thank me for all of the content that I pass along there. It's because of the settings in my Twitter profile that I set once—-that the tweets show up on Facebook.
 
I use Hootsuite throughout the day to post my tweets. If I go on a trip or I'm away from my computer or at a conference, I set up Hootsuite to continue tweeting throughout my trip. You can plan tweets several hours or several days in advance through this tool and it works like clockwork. Recently Regal Books announced this great free ebook with the details about how to use Hootsuite.
 
Every day I use Refollow. I blogged about this tool several years ago. It is not free but worth $20 a month in my view because it is adding about 100 followers a day to my twitter numbers. Every day I get on Refollow and I follow other people's followers. I select people who have the same target market as I have. The followers are selected by their last tweet and I only follow people who are active on twitter by tweeting in the last 24 hours. A certain percentage of these people I follow will begin to follow me and my number of followers continues to increase.
 
Finally every day I use Manage Flitter (Free). This tool improves the quality of my followers. It allows me to quickly eliminate fake twitter profiles, non-English speaking twitter followers and those without an image in the profile. Finally Manage Flitter gives me the ability to unfollow people who do not follow me back. It is an easy tool to us and something I do daily—and some times twice a day. The time factor to use Manage Flitter is minimal and takes seconds to accomplish a great deal with tremendous value in my view.
 
Hopefully I've made this explanation about my social media straightforward and simple so you see how I accomplish it in a short amount of time yet I take action every day and consistently. It is the consistency that counts and draws people to follow me and my information about publishing on a regular basis. If you don't tweet regularly, then there is no need to read your tweets. Yet use free tools like Hootsuite to make the process relatively quick yet effective.