This year my Twitter followers have really spiked. I’ve now got over 1500 followers which I’m pretty chuffed about.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t had the same love affair with Twitter that I did with Facebook or Instagram. I’ve always just found it a harder platform to find love and likes. And call me high maintenance, but I don’t like it when I don’t get attention on a social media platform.
I heard Caitlin Moran describe Twitter as a very male platform, which I found interesting. She finds the limit of 140 characters doesn’t provide enough space for women to express themselves. I must admit that Instagram feels like a more escapist and gentle place than Twitter and I feel happier there.
However as I’ve started interacting more and more on Twitter I’ve come to enjoy it. So here’s some things that have really helped me.
1) Update your profile pictures and chose photos that pop
I recently did this myself. My cover photo had been up for over a year and needed a refresh. I chose a beautiful bright shot of flowers from my holiday in India. Next, my profile picture was a bit corporate and serious. I decided this made me look a bit bland so I found a more fun and friendly photo of myself and did a swap. With these simple changes my page immediately started to feel more ‘me’ and more inviting.
2) Revamp your personal description
My profile page blurb on myself proclaimed that I was a fell runner. It was so out of date that it had actually become a lie. I came up with a new upbeat strapline about myself that reflected my new career and my interests. I’m very judgemental of people’s profile descriptions so improving my own seemed like a good shout and could attract new followers.
3) Find and follow your tribe
If you find people who have similar interests to you and follow them, there’s a high chance they will have a look at your profile, like what they see and follow you back. I’m a massive fan of a niche restaurant called Where The Light Gets In based in Stockport where I live. My recent blog post on the restaurant is in a pinned tweet at the top of my Twitter page. I took an educated guess that people who follow WTLGI on twitter would belong to ‘my tribe’ and would also be interested in my blog post and my feed. I followed a bunch of WTLGI followers and had a high number of follower returns.
4) Images images images
Use original good quality images if you can with as many of your tweets as possible. Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images. I’m lucky to have an excellent mirrorless camera that captures great images. But smart phones really take brilliant photos too. Have a scroll through instagram and look closely at your favourite photos and have a think about how they are composed. Can you emulate any of the angles or ideas that they inspire? A hand holding an ice-cream up to the sky seems to be a big hit with instagrammers and creates a visually powerful image. It’s all about nicking ideas and making them your own. The image below is from Kat Molesworth’s excellent Instagram account.
5) Mention and tag other tweeters
To increase the likelihood of your tweet being read and retweeted, mention other tweeters in the tweet and tag people in the photo. I recently went on a Fresh Walks event which is networking combined with walking. I snapped a picture of the event, wrote out a tweet, mentioned @freshwalks and tagged a bunch of the walkers in the photo. It was a popular post and got retweeted twice and got 10 likes.
I hope you’ve found this post useful and I’m always curious to learn more about Twitter and get better at it, so you have any tips you’d like to share, let me know.
katyascakehole 