Do you want to find followers on Twitter?

Do you want to find real followers who actually want to hear what you have to say, engage with you and re-tweet what you say?

Read on if you want to learn how you can add more followers to your total on Twitter.

This blog is the result of me trying out something I have heard Gary Vaynerchuk talk about in a lot of his keynotes. Gary talks about how he built up his following on Twitter by answering people’s questions. That’s it. I have always advocated answering people’s questions in your blog and this applies equally to Twitter.

The big mistake a lot of people make is that they think social media is just another way for them to sell their stuff. I think the opposite, as does Gary.

I do not want followers for the sake of having followers. It is not a vanity thing. I do not think having lots of followers is any use to people if they do not follow you for the right reasons. If you have a million followers who don’t care what you say it isn’t as good as 100 who do care what you say.

Having followers on Twitter (or any other social network) who actually want to know what you say will help you spread your ideas. This in turn will help you indirectly achieve your objectives, whatever they might be.

FYI My objective is to build a community of people I can learn from and be a filter for sharing good information and ideas with the people who follow me.

Below is an example of a question I found on Twitter. The question is from someone I had never heard of, never met and was in a different country and time zone!

The times are a-changing at LinkedIn. Goodbye, LinkedIn Answers. I won’t miss this Q&A feature very much. You? fb.me/1eDXx4zel

— Dan Gershenson (@DanOnBranding) January 20, 2013

I had heard that LinkedIn was closing down its question and answer feature. I had had quite good engagement when I went on there and felt I should share my thoughts with Dan. We struck up a short conversation.

The trouble with social is that people treat it like an 18 year old trying to get laid. You need to wine & dine em first  

I noticed two email notifications come through

First of which was

Second was

Results

Within two tweets I had acquired a new follower, was re-tweeted to 6185 people and built one new relationship.

Here are some of the other benefits I have seen in the last week of this experiment:

• Increased followers

During five days of spending about 10-15 minutes a day answering questions on Twitter I had added about 50 followers to my Twitter total. To put this into context I had just about broken 500 followers on Twitter before I started so equated to about 10% increase. The first 500 took me a year to earn so 50 more in  week was great.

• Increase in engagement

Mentions and @ replies = 45. I may have had a couple (1-3 a week) of these if I hadn’t tried this experiment but the total was drastically increased.

Favourited tweets = 7. These people saved my tweet as a favourite which bookmarks my tweet for future reference. This is probably about the same amount that I have had through the previous year.

Re-tweets = 5

• Increase in reach

From just 5 re-tweets I increased the numbers of people’s Twitter feed I was in from 500 to 8695. This is a 17.4x increase in the number of people who may see my tweet and have the potential to engage with me.

• Increase in Klout score

I don’t put a lot of value in what your Klout score is but some people do. Especially those companies who think it is essential you have a Klout score over a certain level before the will even interview you for a job. So if this kind of thing is of interest to you, this method works. Over the 7 days my Klout score increased by just over 3 points.

Although the numbers included are not massive, if you take into consideration the percentage increase this experiment proves it is very easy to increase the number of followers naturally and only adding people who want to follow you for what you have to say or the value you can add to their network.

Would this work on other social networks?

This concept would work on any social network but is best suited to Twitter because most of Twitter is open for anyone to access and therefore you have access to more people around the Twitter-verse.

Further information

I will be writing another post to show you different ways to find questions for you to answer. Check back soon.

If you want to hear more from a guy who has worked these ideas and proved how well they can work watch the video below

Trouble viewing the embedded video? Follow this link > > http://youtu.be/dEN8NQK2Qso

Feedback

I would love to hear your feedback on this article and the ideas discussed. Have you tried or will you try any of these techniques? Is there anything you have tried which has helped increase the engagement you have with other like minded people on Twitter?