Building Engagement on Twitter

Introduction to Twitter Engagement

There is an interesting balance that must be struck when you're trying to build a strong following on Twitter. Obviously, certain people are more predisposed to getting Twitter followers up front (depending on your influence in reality), but there are several things to be done to build a follower based and retain them.

Baby Steps

• Start by following the people that you want to influence and that influence you
• Strike a unique balance of followers and following, 1follower:1.25following is a good practice, but early on having more followers is alright
• Start using hashtags and try to associate your company/brand with said hashtag ("own" the hashtag if possible)
• Reach out and converse with new people using hashtags that are relevant to you and them
• Retweet popular articles and topics, so long as they appeal to your purpose
• Keep your average numbers of tweets consistent so that you develop a schedule with your followers
• Tweet at times that your followers would likely see your content
• Don't continuously offer products or free giveaways because your followers will likely follow you for the free and not for the brand
• Don't spam people with a canned message, it only makes them angry

Maturing

• Keep following relevant people and influential people, a lot of people forget that they need to reciprocate on the following
• It's alright to start writing open ended questions once you've built up a user base, before it's just noise sent to a select few people
• Continue sharing resources and more importantly, your take on those topics, people follow you because you have value in your POV, they don't need you to see RTed content
• Connect people and bring people into conversations with other Twitter users, be a facilitator to connect people over like topics - this helps you build relationships
• Use it sparingly to have conversations with people

Always

• Reply to your followers if it is a relevant topic to you or something that is asking for your direct participation
• Offer support (especially if you offer a product)
• Be a human
• Don't rant if it's counterproductive

Off-Site Twitter Engagement

It goes without saying that building a user base on ANY social network requires real groundwork. That means getting out of your seat and talking to people. Making it possible to follow or get engagement with your brand on Twitter outside of the site. Where?

• email signatures
• on your website
• promote hashtag use at events you go to
• on other social networks
• on your business cards
• anything that you do to gets impressions daily

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