How I Changed My Twitter Strategy, Tripled My Followers, and Did It All For Free!

As my time has come and passed with a slew of different social media & blogging communities over the past year, most notably, Digg, Blog Catalog, and SERP’d, I have come to realize, as a blogger, there is an extremely limited number of venues of where to submit your blog content with any real value. Think about it. How many sites can you send your blog updates to that do not hassle us with reciprocity, badges, or heavy-handed moderation…and yet, still gets real exposure…and generates pageviews? Outside of  Blog Engage, which has been hot/cold for me, I can’t think of too many that really work. Can you?

For consistent, long-term traffic generation, Twitter has become the clear choice for many bloggers due to its ease of integration and growing popularity.

A while back, I committed myself to having more of a presence on Twitter and NOTHING happened. It took about a year to go from 250 followers to 410! I had to have been doing something wrong!

I decided to make a change to my Twitter strategy and ultimately tripled my followers in 3 months, going from 410 to 1220 Twitter followers!  Question is: What did I suddenly start doing differently? And how was it free?

My Twitter Strategy: Before And After

Originally, my Twitter strategy was to hand-select a very small community of blogging gurus, internet marketing mavens, SEO specialists, social media aficionados…and follow this small crowd.

And while sure, this enhanced my “Twitter Experience” by limiting the amount of input I received from following thousands of Twitterers, it also severely limited the number of potentially new readers I could have for Source Blogger.

It really boiled down to one thing. Following back. I wasn’t doing it. Why? Perhaps I overvalued the transaction? Or maybe I over-analyzed what I should have been doing? Perhaps I thought I was going to be like the blogger, Steve Pavalina, and have 15k followers… and following 0 in return! (See Below)

Following 0?

Regardless, other bloggers had 4k – 5k followers…and I had 410. If I was going to do something about increasing my Twitter count, I better do it right away.

Could the right combination of third party Twitter apps and a few Twitter plugins do the trick? We’ll just have to see.

How I Tripled My Followers

— Twitter List Management

1) JustUnfollow — is a Twitter-based app that displays your Twitter contacts that do not follow you back followed by the option to unfollow them with one click.

I like you and everything…and don’t mind what you put out on Twitter, but the trade-off is you’re going to have to see my stuff too by following me. It’s just good business.

I use Just Unfollow on a daily basis. Those that have unfollowed me sincle the last time I checked… ZAP! You’re gone…unfollowed!

I recently wrote about Just Unfollow here: JustUnfollow: Should You Unfollow Twitter Users That Do Not Follow You?!

2) Who.Unfollowed.Me — Do you ever just want to see a recent list of who unfollowed you? You have a right to follow/unfollow whom you wish; that’s your prerogative. But, if you and I know each other, I may ask you why you decided to unfollow me?

3) UnTweeps — I’ve struggled with whether or not to use this. Let’s see the good and bad:

Good — Allows you to screen people you follow on Twitter based on their Twitter (in)activity. Honestly, I use 15 days as my screener — meaning if you have not tweeted once in over 2 weeks, you’re history, pal!

Bad — (I want you to pay close attention to this part.) First of all, why would you want to follow someone who has been recently inactive?

The first assumption is that they have abandoned their Twitter account (or blog) and have no interest in continuing its use. Is there a likelihood that someone would return to their Twitter account after a long period of inactivity? I’m sure it’s happened.

But here’s the real bad part: Are you breaking the chain? This is my theory on “the chain” and you can tell me if it’s crazy or not?

When someone follows me, Twitter sends a notification message of who it is. When you look below the person’s bio Twitter sends in the e-mail you’ll notice this:

From that detail,  there is a list of three users that I follow who also follow who just followed me. Below that,  is a list of three users the person who just followed me follows who also follows me.

My point is that there is some type of harmony in the Twittersphere that allows your Twitter name to recommended to others that too much “list management” may impact in a negative way. You know what I mean?

What I’m trying to say is that twitter appears to be one big “six degrees of separation”" with Twitter users that all seem to be relating to each other based on who they follow and who follows them. And breaking that scientific balance good could be counterproductive.

— Automation

4) SocialOomph — allows me to automate what I do on Twitter. This was the missing piece of the puzzle. Now I auto-follow which gets followed by the auto-DM. You may be using a different service for your use of Twitter?

It appears there is a lot ore I could do with this site and have actually yet to explore the possibilities. But the basics are covered.

— WordPress Plugins & Blog Navigation

5) Follow Me On Twitter — I am often surprised by the number of bloggers with no presence on Twitter. I have scrolled up and down over many blogs without seeing a way to follow them on Twitter.

If you are on Twitter, make it easy for blog readers to connect with you. This is how it’s done on Source Blogger: (See Below)

6) Tweet Button — OK, so you aren’t quite sure about making the leap to Twitter. But, you can still allow Twitter users to make your articles viral there! i’d definitely recommend an easy to locate and identify Twitter button before (and preferably after) each blog post.

7) Tweet Old Post — Is one of the best Twitter plugins I have ever come across. Where else can you promote your archived content…and do it all based on automation? You set the frequency of how often you want your old content to be sent to Twitter as well as any categories you want omitted and also the minimum/maximum age of the content. (Perhaps you don’t want content from 2007 retweeted?!) I love control!

In Closing

The worst thing about Twitter is not using it to its full capacity and not having a bonafide strategy. And yes, there is a direct relation to the number of followers and conversions from Twitter to your blog!

What other strategies have you used to increase your Twitter count?

While increasing Twitter followers is important to the marketing and promotion of your blog, it is not blogging. Obsessing over Twitter followers is not productive. A Follower count doesn’t say anything about how influential your followers are. Automate what you can, but you’re only ever going to be as good as the content you offer on Twitter.

What’s next?

Read even more about Twitter here on Source Blogger: Source Blogger/Twitter