Overview:
- Polish your profile.
- Be consistent but not overbearing.
- Analyze and optimize your performance.
- Be personable and interact with others.
- Understand X’s algorithm.
- Leverage your audiences outside of X.
X (formerly Twitter) is debatably the quickest way to grow your social following from scratch. Not only is the platform poised to grow in years to come, but X says its users are 80% millennials with affluence, and 77% of American users earn $75,000 or more. This means if you want to build a following, sell a product or service, or build brand awareness, X is the perfect place to start.
You most likely already have a following on X, but veteran or newbie, here are the 6 best steps to get more X followers from outside your digital circle:
1. Create an Inviting Profile
When audiences come to your profile, it’s crucial to make sure it is polished to perfection. Having a nice profile leaves a good impression on your audience no matter what you’re about!
Start with a clean and High-Res profile picture. Logos are great for companies, but authenticity wins every time on social media. Having an authentic and personable photo showing your face in your profile picture can impact more users because everyone wants to connect with a human over a company. After all, it is social media – so make it personal.
Additionally, you can incorporate an attractive header photo to draw in your personality in multiple ways:
- Introduce yourself with a quote or your job title. You can even add another photo of yourself to break the binds of a small circular profile pic, letting people see more of you.
- Show who you work for, add your company’s logo in the header, so people know who you represent, all while adding credibility to your profile.
- Add information about recent campaigns your company is doing. According to X, hearing about promos and campaigns is the 2nd biggest reason people follow brands on X!
You can even get creative and make the two photos interact with each other, as seen below:
@Subway showcases their newest sandwich.
@JimWoodsPR explains his niche in Public Relations with the simple designs of his website.
@BlakeMycoskie, Founder of TOMS, includes a quote beside him giving a speech. He seems authentic!
@LTA_Crypto not only shows an up arrow relating to Bitcoin prices in his profile, but it also points to his YouTube channel. Genius!
Another thing to consider when updating your profile is your follower to following ratio. People tend to trust those with more followers because it speaks to their authority on the topics they post about. If you follow more people than the followers you have, it might seem like you’re not worth following. But this doesn’t count if you are new to X because growing your audience takes effort, and we’ve all been there.
2. Don’t Post in Bursts, but Consistency is Key
Consistency on X is hard to define when there are 6,000 new posts every second. Do you post once, 3 times, or 10 times a day?
The sweet spot is 2-6 times a day. People follow you because they like what you have to offer. But no one wants to be bombarded by so many posts in a day.
Better yet, the fewer times you post, the more chances you have to supply your audience with more valuable content they enjoy. Think of who your audience is and what they do differently. If you were them, what would you want to see? Test out different types of content to see what your followers engage with.
Maybe you can schedule a X thread on Monday, a Poll or GIF on Tuesday, a relevant news article on Wednesday… You get the point.
Whatever the content might be, make sure it is great content. People follow others to gain value. Since the average time spent on X is a little over 3 minutes, you want to make each post count and post enough that your followers will see them.
You can optimize your post’s reach by knowing the best times to post during your audience’s peak activity times. Analytics are difficult if you don’t have the right time or expertise, so using social media marketing tools can provide actionable intelligence to engage your audience based on their location and what they discuss in the moment.
Lastly, run a followers campaign on X! X has tips on how to do this easily, and if you have the budget, it can bring new audiences your way. But what if you don’t have the budget?
You can easily map your followers for free to gain insight into what is relevant to them. Knowing where your followers are can help you create content that caters to different portions of your audience, ultimately improving engagement and allowing your X account to grow naturally!
In the end, every audience is unique and requires trial and error to test out what works.
3. Analyze Your X Performance
Social media algorithms are ever-changing and becoming increasingly complicated, making it hard to keep up with the trends. Most brands and influencers have to utilize big data and analytics platforms to keep growing. Have you ever played chess with a computer? It’s hard.
Utilize Analytics and Data to Increase Performance
Luckily you never have to guess what your audience is thinking or what they like. Using 3rd party analytics and management platforms will make you the computer that outsmarts humans. Fedica doesn’t only comb your feed to give you the analytics you need to strategize; you can also use hashtag suggestions to stay on topic with your followers every day. You always want to keep your audience’s wants and needs at the forefront of your marketing strategy.
A/B Testing Strategy
Another way to analyze performance is the classic A/B testing method. It’s simple. Make a slight change to a strategy that you think will improve your Key Performance Indicator (KPI). This measurement indicator can be anything from earnings per click (EPC), engagements, or Reposts to Follows. Then, you can test a different approach alongside your original strategy to notice improvements. Be sure not to change too much because you can lose sight of what is affecting your KPI.
Now no one wants two sets of posts being posted at once because this will clog your timeline and might seem like spam. One way of doing this discreetly is by segmenting your audience, so half sees the original content while the other half sees the altered method.
Using this method, you can even post the same content with slight alterations saving you time and effort while increasing your performance. Now this is starting to sound more like 3D chess! ?
Optimize Your Posting Times
Optimizing when you publish your posts has a huge effect on your outreach. Given that X users don’t use the platform for more than 3 minutes, you must prioritize when they post, so posts reach as many of your followers as possible.
Fedica makes this easy. We tell you when your top-performing hour of the day is as well as what day of the week your audience will be the most receptive.
Better yet, don’t just go for the best times – join the conversation! Use our Hashtag Map to analyze hashtags and keywords, so you stay relevant to your audience and the sentiments of the current moment. You never want to sound tone-deaf to your followers.
4. Interact With Others
Start following other people in your industry or niche. Once you connect with similar influencers, you can see what others do and improve on what works best! For example, Reposting posts from others and replying to your audience will always keep you in the loop and allow your audience to feel closer to you.
When your presence on X is conversational, you will increase engagement and grow naturally because, after all, conversations are the foundation of all human relationships! So tag people all the time in your posts! Tagging is an often-overlooked key to engagement and will help with that pesky algorithm.
Here are some easy ways you can be more interactive:
- Collab with micro-influencers. This is an amazing way to build a following, and collaboration with others makes it easy to share audiences.
- Participate in #FollowFriday. It’s technically not cheating!
- Try to make posts shareable. Share words of advice, post inspirational content, or something funny you think people will share.
- Monitor and respond to mentions and replies.
- Consider a Quote post over a repost. Even just adding your reaction to someone’s post tells people why you’re posting it, adds value, and shows your personality – even if it’s just a ? emoji.
- Host an X chat. Ensure to notify people early so they prepare to join the convo.
- Search for people talking about your industry. This can be either searching for keywords, similar influencers, or hashtags relevant to your business.
- Analyze your followers that align with your niche, so you know who to follow and engage with for more natural growth!
5. Understanding the X Algorithm
You’ve made it this far, and now it’s time to make that algorithm work for you! We learned how to optimize our posting times and cater specific content to what our audiences want to see.
It’s easy as 1, 2, Post!
- The algorithm wants to show users accounts and posts with plenty of the following: reposts, followers, profile clicks, likes, and impressions. Essentially, make content that is so valuable that others have no choice but to repost and engage with. Ask questions, be personable, and make people feel happy and inspired.
- 3rd party platforms analyze keywords, so utilize hashtags properly. Don’t fill your posts with too many hashtags, and use those used in your niche. X recommends the most hashtags you should use is 2. After 3 hashtags, there is a 17% decline in engagement, so choose wisely!
- Richness of media: Post visual content.
Videos are reposted 6x more than photos and 3x more than posts with GIFs.
Live-Post an event with threads! This keeps the posts together and does not clog your timeline while attracting users present in the moment.
Follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time, you should be providing value to your audience. This can be anything but should be unique to your following. What do your followers come to you for? It would be best if you marketed yourself only 20% of the time, any more, and your audience might not see the benefit of following you.
If you have a budget, you can use promoted posts to increase your reach. It’s not free, but you can choose how much you spend. This might be a good way to jumpstart your audience to gain enough traction to switch to natural growth thereafter. In terms of spending, you should never buy fake followers. They are easy to spot and instantly ruin your reputation to any real person browsing your profile.
6. Draw in Followers Outside of X
Don’t limit yourself to X alone! Draw in your existing audience from other feeds to give you a follow. Ensure that your feeds give different angles to what you provide because users on different social networks want different content. For example, our YouTube channel goes in-depth in showing you how to get the best out of our service and step-by-step processes, which is harder to do on X.
It is then easy to get your audiences to grow naturally because some find us on X while others find us on our other platforms. Either way, we have a little something for everyone. The result is that our audience has more outreach because not every YouTube enthusiast has a X account and might want to grow their following elsewhere.
An easy way to converge your audiences is to reference your X handle wherever you have the opportunity! Blogs may not be your thing but take this one, for example. People might find us on Google and then learn that we have YouTube videos to make learning easier. Cross-platform strategies work well in building audiences all over because wherever you came from, you now know there are many platforms to learn with Fedica. Not only does this blog invite people to visit our other platforms, but the content doesn’t expire, allowing current and future visitors the possibility to learn something new.
Enough about us, other ways you can share your followings are by including your social media accounts in your email signature or including your recent posts in a feed on your website! Usually, businesses attach social buttons near the bottom of their website for easy access. You can even go as far as referencing some posts in your blog posts to use as examples or references. The possibilities are endless!
Wrap-up
To conclude, it’s not that hard to reach new followers and grow your audience on X! Here are the key takeaways:
- Create an authentic and inviting profile that makes people know the real you. Make that process fast with visuals.
- Consistency is key. Using analytics and management platforms will not overwhelm your audience and will ensure you are posting to the majority every single time. Remember, you have a 3-minute window to leave an impact, so make it count!
- Analyze and optimize your performance and strategies. See what works best one step at a time.
- Be sociable and personable. Interacting is half the battle, while the other is providing useful, quality content.
- Understand what X’s algorithm wants. Use it to your advantage.
- Strengthen your following with other platforms. Not everyone uses the same social media.