Blogging Tips

5 Reasons People May Follow You on Twitter

Written by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today

Previously, I listed 5 Reasons They May Not Follow on Twitter and 5 Reasons They May Stop Following on Twitter. However, those two articles leave a natural question: What actually makes people follow you?

Though I can only speak for myself, as with the other two articles, I took notes on my Twitter usage and studied the things that made me follow people. I found that, once one avoided the pitfalls listed in the two articles above, one typically still had to have a certain something special to make me take the extra step of hitting “follow”.

So what were those hidden elements? Here are my top five reasons reasons for saying “Yes” on Twitter.

5. A Good Icon

Is your icon memorable or unique? Does it stand out as I scroll through my Twitter stream? Does it make people want to follow you?

Though a 48×48 image is very small, you can do a lot of creative things with it. A good icon makes people want to follow you and can even cause people to overlook other weaknesses in your account (IE: It’s very new).

At the very least, if you aren’t feeling creative, don’t leave your icon blank or use something that makes you look like a spammer (such as a risque image). If you don’t want to use your icon to sell yourself, which may not be practical if it is a professional account, at least don’t let it turn people away.

4. A Professional Design

When people open your account, they should be wowed the second the page opens up. A great design can make your account look more professional stand out amongst the deluge of other Twitter users.

Strangely, the most important element of most Twitter profiles is the background. A custom background† image can go a very long way to making your Twitter presence look “put together” and like time and energy went into creating it. This shows people that you are serious about your Twitter account and are worth taking the time to follow.

However, don’t ignore the rest of your profile. Make sure that the rest of your profile, such as link and sidebar colors, also mesh well.

Also, having a background that is too promotional may actually turn people away. It’s important to ride the line between explaining who you are and using Twitter as an electronic billboard.

3. A Solid Profile

Your name, location, Web site and bio, as short of a description as they are, say a great deal about you

Use this area wisely. Tell those who visit your profile who you are, what you do and where you live. People in the same town will be inclined to follow you as will people in your field. Give yourself as many opportunities as possible to connect with others as those connections will motivate people not only to follow you, but to reach out and talk with you.

Twitter may not be Facebook, but in this regard, it has many of the same rules.

2. Your Numbers

If you are followed by a large number of people, especially if you are followed by more than you are following, others will want to follow you too. Part of this is herd mentality but a lot of it is that we trust the wisdom of crowds to help us find people worth following (One of the reasons social news is so popular).

It is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but once you get a few hundred or few thousand followers, it becomes much easier to convince other Twitter users to add you to their list.

At the very least though, ensure that your numbers are in some kind of parity. Following far more than you have following back turns many Twitter users away.

1. Your Content

Your content is easily the most important thing in making people follow you. Are your tweets valuable? Do you provide good links? Do you @reply regularly and converse with others?

Of the people I follow on Twitter, at least half of my follows are based on the content of the tweets alone, usually because they showed up in one of my Twitters searches.

If you write compellingly about a topic, people who are interested in it will follow you. If you use Twitter solely for promotion, to spam out links or only push your services, they won’t.

It is that simple.

Bottom Line

All in all, as I’ve said before, what it is important on Twitter is the conversation. If you come to Twitter with the mindset that you are going to meet people, engage with them on a human level and not use it solely as a promotion engine, you will probably find a very warm welcome.

That being said, Twitter still does require a great deal of work. You have to make sure that your account looks professional, that you put out good content and that you follow the relevant topics. It may mean a lot of effort, but if you approach it correctly, it can also bring with it a great deal of reward.

In the end, it is important to remember that the number of people who follow you is not as important as how engaged they and how much they are able to help you achieve your goals. A person with just a dozen followers can be doing a lot better than one with many thousands, if those dozen are truly engaged and listening.