Get X (formerly Twitter) Followers: A Tutorial

How to get X (formerly Twitter) followers and keep them

Getting X (formerly Twitter) followers can be challenging. Two important ways to get followers are to follow other people (including those who follow you) and write interesting, compelling tweets regularly.

X offers a tool to search your email contacts to find people to follow, but that isn't the best place to start. Many experts recommend a targeted approach to following people on X and starting with a few experts in your field, especially if you want to build an effective X stream on subjects that interest you.

Follow Other People

Find people with interests similar to yours and follow them. That, in turn, will help you get X followers. This is a basic and quick way to get followers on X who add value to your X experience.

As you start following people, a snowball will slowly start rolling. The people you follow will often check your feed when they see you follow them. If they like what they see, they may click the "follow" button and become a follower. When that happens, other people will see you on X.

A Good Profile Helps Get Followers

Complete your profile before you do much following or tweeting. Invest time learning the basics of using X. Too many novices charge ahead without knowing how X works.

Complete your profile and have interesting tweets in your timeline before following the people you would like to follow you back. Otherwise, if you haven't tweeted or filled out your profile, these folks may click away without electing to follow you.

At a minimum, ensure you have a photo of yourself on your profile page and have written a few words about yourself or your business in the bio area. Identify yourself, too. People rarely follow mysterious, cute, or clever names without knowing who's behind the X handle, particularly in professional circles.

You should follow people because the more people who follow you, the more likely their followers will check you out as a follower of someone they follow. This is the snowball effect: You follow people, and some of them will follow you. Then some of their followers will check you out.

Follow Those Who Follow You, or at Least Many of Them

If you don't follow the people who follow you, some of them may get irked and unfollow you.

In addition to being good X etiquette, following your followers may cause them to engage with you publicly on their timelines, attracting more attention from their followers. Again, it's the snowball effect.

Tweet Regularly to Get Followers

Tweeting at least once a day helps get followers. Updating frequently (but not too frequently) makes more people want to follow you.

What is the right frequency for tweeting? Ideally, at least once or twice a day. If you tweet more often than that, use a tool to time your tweets and space them out; don't send a barrage all at once.

Tweet About Interesting Topics and Use Popular Hashtags

The more you tweet about topics and use hashtags that other people are interested in, the more likely they are to see your tweets when searching for those keywords and hashtags. If they like your tweet, they may click your handle to check you out.

Tweeting high-quality content about topics relevant to your followers' interests is the best way to build and retain a large following in the long run. It takes time to build a following this way, but your ability to retain followers will be greater than if you get followers quickly using automatic follower strategies.

Thou Shall Not Spam

A word about how NOT to get followers: The quickest way to lose followers is to use your tweets to advertise or sell products or services. People are on X to converse and learn.

Consider More Than Just Numbers on X

This is also known as the quality vs. quantity debate.

So far, we've mostly talked about the numbers game and how to get followers. But if you use X to promote your career or business, be careful to get appropriate followers for your goals. That means choosing a strategy and targeting followers thoughtfully rather than taking a scattershot approach.

Much debate over whether people should pursue quantity or quality to get followers. Would you rather have more followers of any kind or fewer followers who are interested in the same things you are? Most experts advocate quality over quantity, though both have a role in marketing strategies for using Twitter.

If you care about quality, avoid tactics for getting followers that might backfire by alienating the people you want to keep and causing them to unfollow you. Many auto-follow methods fall into this category.

If you use X for business, most social media experts will tell you it doesn't pay to overdo it on following people or getting too many followers. In the long run, cluttering your stream with messages from people whose interests don't overlap with yours can reduce the value you get.

Was this page helpful?