One of the largest hurdles for creatives in gaining exposure for their awesome work is building a social media platform. For the #WritingCommunity, other social media platforms pale in comparison to the support, encouragement, and advice given daily on Twitter. Starting at zero, many authors and illustrators struggle to find even a couple hundred followers, let alone 5,000. Here’s an effective strategy I used to climb all the way up from zero to 5,000. It worked for me and will work for you.

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How Do You Grow Your Twitter Platform to 5,000 Followers?

Growing a Twitter following comes down to three simple areas:

1. Awareness
2. Engagement
3. Frequency.

If you apply any level of additional focus on one or all three of these, you will see immediate benefit.

Twitter Platform Awareness

You can use Twitter in two primary ways.

It can be your personal corner of the world to share, learn, and interact.

Or it can be part of your business brand.

Depending on which you choose will cause you to use Twitter in very different ways.

Let’s assume you want to build exposure as an author or illustrator.

Let’s treat it like a business because at the end of the day, you want to benefit in some way.

You want people visiting your website to see your work.

You want people following your latest news, whether it be a book release or a painting for sale.

If you aren’t aware of how to leverage the incredible power of Twitter to build your personal brand and increase your exposure online, you’re going to be spinning your tires in the mud.

Twitter is a tool and each Twitter user is a window of opportunity.

Let’s say you Tweet a link about your book for sale on Amazon.

You only have 35 followers.

The odds are stacked against you that, when you post your Tweet, only a fraction of your followers are even online.

Of those online, only a fraction will engage or interact with your Tweet.

Let’s say from your 35 followers, only 3 interact with you.

Two visit your link on Amazon but don’t like or retweet your post.

One follower likes your post.

As a sidebar note in awareness, liking a Tweet can mean a plethora of things. It can mean…

• Thanks for taking the time to share that information.
• I like what you said.
• That seems neat.
• I think my followers would like to know about this
• This person worked so hard, I’d like to give them some encouragement.
• This is so true and relatable!
• Thank you.
• I see what you’re doing in your corner of the world and applaud you.
• Way to be bold.
• I appreciate you.
• I read your book and I LOVE it!
• I want more Tweets like this one.
• Oops, I accidentally liked that Tweet but don’t want to take the like away!

When someone interacts with your Tweet, an incredible thing happens.

You become interconnected to the other person’s network.

Business guru Seth Godin likens people in today’s connected age to billions of networks.

Each person opens the window to an entirely new network and the open windows can just keep opening.

The term ‘viral” on social media captures this perfectly.

When a piece of information gains enough traction to exponentially spread through hundreds and thousands of networks (think users and their followers), the information has gone viral.

It is a level of marketing that money simply cannot buy – though many will try to sell you on it!

I say all this to make you aware.

Each one of your followers is unlimited opportunity.

If you deliver content they appreciate, they open the door and share it with their network.

But remember back to what I said earlier.

Only a fraction of a fraction of your followers will interact with your content.

If you’ve got 35 followers, 3 may interact.

If you’ve got 5,000 followers on Twitter, 150 may interact by leaving comments, liking the tweet, re-tweeting your post, visiting your profile, or clicking your link.

You may think, well, that’s still only 150 people.

But that’s where this whole network notion goes bananas!

At 5,000 followers, there is a very good chance you’ll have followers who have far more followers than you.

What I’ve found to be true is often those with many, many more followers are very generous with their interactions.

They understand Twitter and treat it like a business, building their brand with quality content and helpful interactions.

If you, with 5,000 followers, have a Tweet engaged with by someone who has, say 46,000 followers, your Tweet gets a huge bump of activity.

That game changing follower has just promoted your content to the masses.

Now, instead of possibly 150 people interacting, your Tweet could be interacted with by 1,500 people.

That may mean an additional 10 people may follow you after seeing the Tweet.

A few may visit your website or product page.

Hundreds more may re-tweet or like what you posted.

Do you see where this is going?

Many people on Twitter aren’t leveraging the platform in such a way as to gain exposure, build momentum, and establish their personal or professional brand.

Followers are important, no matter what self-deprecating people may think because followers are simply people.

We want to help more and more people which means we need more and more exposure, more and more followers, and more and more interactions.

Now that you are aware of Twitter’s power to showcase your hard work, you need to know how to gain followers.

Twitter Community Engagement

Engagement is king when it comes to growing your Twitter followers.

Many low-follower count Twitter users look up at a celebrity account and notice they have 5 Million followers and are only following 17 people.

So, they think they just need to put out better content and the masses will come running.

That couldn’t be any further from the truth.

When you are growing in any industry, it’s important you set your sights on the next step, not the next floor.

Who is just above you and what are they doing?

What you’ll find and what I found by experience, is following others is the single best way of gaining followers yourself.

But you don’t want to just start following random people.

You want to find the right people who are active Twitter users engaged in your niche.

If you’re an author, take a look at who’s interacting with the #WritingCommunity hashtag.

Other great hashtags being used are #WritersLife, #WriterLift, #AmWriting, #AmQuerying, etc.

When you see Tweets in these categories, open up the comments, likes, and re-tweet lists to see what users are interacting.

This is a great sign they are interested in the writing niche and active.

The last thing you want to set your sights on is an inactive user in the wrong niche!

As you examine these lists of people, read their biographies (bios) and see what they’re all about.

You may not be interested in many of them, but others will pique your interest.

If you appreciate what they’re saying, doing, or involved in, give them a follow.

I’ve found a commonly used statistic to be very true.

Usually, 30% of people you follow will follow you back, IF, and that’s a BIG IF, they are active in the niche you are targeting.

I see a lot of people who are following 3,000 accounts but only have 20 followers themselves.

This is likely due to targeting the wrong type of person or not having content that speaks to their target audience.

If they would only share their thoughts in various Tweets, interact with content, and follow active users in their niche, the 30% statistic would ring true.

Besides following other users to grow your own following, it’s critical to like, retweet, and comment on other people’s Tweets.

This is quality engagement.

When you begin helping grow someone else’s exposure, they will certainly take notice.

Even with my large and ever growing Twitter following of nearly 12,000 (at the time I wrote this article – it later jumped to 27,000), I notice those who consistently engage with my content and it causes me to want to find ways to support them back.

So, if someone has liked a lot of my Tweets, I may go check out some of theirs and give some of their Tweets a boost to my following.

See how this works?

Engaging with like-minded people and following those you appreciate will grow your following faster than you can imagine.

Increase Your Tweet Frequency

If engagement is king, frequency is the loyal queen in building your platform empire.

No one wants to interact with a leech.

In fact, if you’re not Tweeting, liking, commenting, or re-tweeting regularly, you can bet the farm your follower count will begin to decrease.

Inactivity is a metric many Twitter-based platforms analyze to help users (especially those with larger follower counts) prune the dead branches.

Don’t be a dead branch and waste your effort curating your followers.

The more frequently you engage on Twitter, the faster your follower count will rise.

But don’t get tempted to trade quality for quantity.

The most beneficial engagements are authentic engagements.

Erroneous or bad taste interactions will result in people leaving you in droves.

Consider how you can comment to someone’s Tweet in such a way as to provide help, encouragement, or motivation.

If you are thoughtful and considerate in how you treat people, you’ll become a magnet for people to follow.

They will admire you and include you in their own Twitter endeavors, like follow back Friday (#FF) where users create lists of people they respect to encourage others to follow them.

Engage and engage frequently is the key to growing your Twitter followers from zero to 5,000.

After 5,000 followers, it’s a whole new game.

Maybe I’ll write a post about that next if you would find it helpful.

Let me know in the comments below, would you?

If you really want to up your social media marketing game on Twitter and other social media platforms, check out Andrew Macarthy’s book 500 Social Media Marketing Tips.

In the digital age, we are more personally responsible to communicate our brand if we hope to have the success we are aiming for.

Andrew’s book will help illuminate proven tips on many choice platforms available.

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