Looking at other Twitter profiles. Are those Twitter followers real?

If you come across an account following only 300 people but with 5000 followers in return you could question if those followers have been purchased and are in fact ‘bots’. This is not always the case, for instance, bigger brands and celebrities will often follow very few accounts and in return have many followers.

Another suggestion that followers have been purchased is if the account received minimal to no interaction. You have to question if their audience is relevant or in fact real and if the audience is real, why aren’t they engaging?

The biggest give away is often if a business new to Twitter gains thousands of followers, quite literally, overnight.

If you consider the above when assessing your competitors online you will be better prepared to spot these dormant audiences and if you are considering purchasing followers as a quick fix. Read on and think again.

Having a purchased audience will do nothing but improve your vanity rating. You will have lots of fake, inactive robot followers that will never interact with your content. They will never like or retweet your posts and they will never click links to your products.

Your audience

If you want to use your Twitter account to promote your business you need to target the right audience. Who is likely to buy from you? Are they geographically based? Do they have a common interest? Have these details in mind when you start growing your audience.

If you want to grow an audience via Twitter that will actually engage with your content there are only really 3 ways of going about it.

1. Organically seek out and follow relevant accounts
2. Pay for Twitter promotions to gain new followers
3. Good content over time will naturally attract your key audience

You can always use external marketing avenues such as newsletters and links from your website but for now, we’ll focus solely on Twitter growth via Twitter.

Organic Twitter growth

To go about this organically can take time but you will be certain the audience you are targeting is the right one for your message. Don’t be disheartened if they don’t follow back. Not everyone will. If you find the majority of accounts don’t follow you back perhaps analyse why. And ultimately you can always unfollow them.

When following new accounts keep an eye out for a few of the following points:

• Do they have a profile picture? Is their bio complete?
• When was the last time they tweeted? Have they ever tweeted?
• Are they relevant to your targeted location/and or demographics?

This will take time and its good to note that Twitter will stop you following accounts so you can’t follow one thousand accounts in 2 hours. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Conclusion – How to build a Twitter following from scratch

In my humble opinion, if you truly want results from your Twitter account you need to start with a real audience. It will take time to grow your followers but it will be time well spent. Don’t worry about having a small following, it will grow over time. If your following to follower ratio isn’t in your favour, unfollow accounts that don’t follow back. Just keep going!

Check out our service page for more information about how we manage social media profiles for organisations across the North West of England.