Want to learn the secret to getting more followers on Twitter? You’re in the right place.
It’s been a pretty wild time for the bird app.
Ever since Elon Musk’s controversial acquisition of the platform, the Twitterverse has been in a seemingly never-ending state of change.
And while not all of those changes have been well received, some of them have brought new opportunities for growth.
In this post, we’re going to show you how to get Twitter followers this year. We’ll share 30 proven methods that are pretty much guaranteed to work if you put in the work.
1. Work on your profile
We’re going to be covering a lot of methods that will get people to visit your Twitter profile in this post. But if your profile isn’t set up to convert, those visitors aren’t going to click follow.
So, first off, make sure you’ve got a unique profile image that grabs attention.
A lot of people just use a picture of their face (or for brands, their logo), but you don’t have to go down that route. @justinbieber has a gummy-bear NFT set as his profile pic, and he has the third most-followed Twitter account in the world.
Aside from your profile pic, you’ll also want to make sure you have an engaging Twitter bio that tells your audience what you’re all about (and gives them a reason to follow), as well as a good header image, and a consistent color theme. You can use online graphic design software like Canva to make your header image and profile pic.
And don’t forget to pin your best or most important Tweets to the top of your profile, so that they’re the first thing your visitors see when they open it up.
There’s just one more thing you need to do to get your profile set up, and that is…
2. Get verified on Twitter Blue
It pains me to say it, but Twitter is pay-to-play now.
Earlier this year, the new chief Twit made the controversial decision to remove legacy Blue checkmarks and replace them with Twitter Blue—a paid monthly subscription service.
Now, if you want that blue tick next to your name, you have to pay $8 per month. And unfortunately, if you want to grow on Twitter, you pretty much need that blue tick.
Because if you’re not a Twitter Blue subscriber, your profile is ‘deboosted’; kind of like a partial shadow ban.
Your Tweets, comments, and replies won’t get nearly as much visibility, and you’ll struggle to get any organic reach as a result.
But if you do sign up for Twitter Blue, you’ll benefit from prioritized rankings in conversations and search. Your Tweets will be more visible, and your replies will rank closer to the top.
Plus, you’ll also get early access to premium features like the ability to edit Tweets, higher character limits per Tweet, etc.
You can also purchase Twitter Verified Organizations verification instead if you’re a legit business, which gives you all the same benefits as Twitter Blue.
I know, it sucks that you have to pay for growth—but that’s just the way it is now.
3. Tweet more often
If you hardly ever tweet, it’s going to be difficult to build an audience.
The more you tweet, the more people you’ll reach, and the more your Twitter following will increase.
If you need help, social automation platforms like Missinglettr can save a lot of time.
For example, with Missinglettr, you can turn a single blog post into a bunch of different tweets that will be dripped out over a period of time that you choose.
4. Tweet when your audience is most active
Tweeting when your audience is most active helps to maximize your engagement and reach, which helps you to grow your following
But don’t worry, you don’t need to be chained to Twitter 24/7 in order to post when your audience is most active.
You can use a social media scheduler like SocialBee to line up and schedule tweets in advance to be automatically sent out at the best times.
5. Comment on popular Tweets
Unfortunately, Tweeting to your timeline won’t get you very far if you don’t have a lot of followers to begin with.
In fact, if you have less than 2,000 authentic followers, it’s unlikely your Tweets will reach any new potential followers at all.
So what do you do instead in those early stages? Simple, you tap into somebody else’s following.
And the way you do that is by commenting on popular Tweets from other profiles in your niche with a large, engaged audience. The idea is that people will see your replies and some of those users might decide to check out your profile and follow you.
Here’s an example from @iamlauwolff, who left this funny and relatable comment on an Elon Musk tweet.
It earned 39.9k views, 212 likes, and 3 retweets. That’s a lot of exposure from one simple reply. And you can bet it bagged her a bunch of followers too
6. Like the Tweets/comments of your target audience
Liking Tweets from people you want to follow you is a super easy way to get more followers for very little effort. Do this every day, as many times as you can.
Here’s why it works. When you interact with somebody’s Tweet or comment, they get a notification telling them that somebody just liked/replied to their post.
Often, those users will then be curious to see who interacted with them and check out your profile. And if they like what they see, they might follow you. It’s that simple.
7. Promote your Twitter handle across social media
Twitter’s great, but it isn’t the easiest platform to grow a following on.
So diversify your efforts and try to grow your following on other social media platforms too. TikTok’s the big one right now, but you can also get followers quickly on Instagram, Meta, YouTube, etc.
Then, promote your Twitter handle across social to funnel the followers you’ve accrued on those other platforms back over to your Twitter.
An easy way to do this: Add a link to your Twitter in your social bios and a CTA asking people to check it out.
These social media management tools can help you to schedule posts across all your socials from one dashboard. You might also want to check out these posts to find out how to grow quickly on other social networks:
- How To Get More Likes On Facebook: The Beginner’s Guide
- How To Go Viral On Instagram: The Beginner’s Guide
- How To Get More Views On TikTok: 13 Proven Strategies
- How To Promote Your YouTube Channel: 18 Ways To Get More Views
8. Run a social media contest
Running a social media contest is a great way to go viral and get thousands of new Twitter followers fast.
You’ll need to sign up for a social media contest platform to get started. We’d recommend SweepWidget.
To build your contest, you’ll need to set a prize, and then choose the required entry method. If your goal is to increase Twitter followers, then click Ways Users Can Enter > Twitter > Follow, and connect your Twitter account.
Now, to enter for a chance to win the prize, users will have to follow you on Twitter. You can add additional entry requirements like refer-a-friend to help your contest go viral. Then when you’ve set it up, promote it on all your socials to get the ball rolling.
9. Understand the Twitter algorithm
Earlier this year, Twitter open-sourced the code for their recommendation algorithm. Anyone can now read the whole thing on Github.
Once you know how it works, you can game the algorithm to get your Tweets to be shown to more people in your target communities. And this will help you to get more followers.
The algorithm is fairly complex, and we’d recommend doing your own research to fully get to grips with it. But the basic gist is that it tries to serve up Tweets to users that it thinks those users are more likely to engage with.
So to improve the visibility of your Tweets, you’ll want to make sure they send off positive engagement signals.
@petergyang dug into the source code and determined that this is how engagement signals are weighted:
Try to Tweet out content that gets as many likes and retweets as possible. And avoid negative signals like only including a URL, not including any text, or getting muted/blocked/unfollowed.
10. Tweet about breaking news
Twitter is where people go to talk about news in real-time, as the stories break.
So naturally, Tweeting about or commenting on breaking stories is a great way to get more engagement. Do this consistently, and you’ll get tons of followers.
For example, remember the blackout of Superbowl XLVII?
Well, millions of users up and down the US flocked to Twitter to see what others had to say about the power outage, and Oreo quickly capitalized on the breaking news story. Within minutes, they’d shared this iconic Tweet:
Needless to say, it made history as one of the best Tweets of all time. It racked up a crazy 12,900 retweets and millions of views. And you can bet it bagged Oreo tons of new followers too.
11. Tweet about trending topics
Aside from Tweeting about news stories, it’s also worth Tweeting about trending topics.
Is there a certain TV show that everyone seems to be talking about right now? Get involved in the conversation! Or is there a certain national holiday happening right now? Tweet about it.
You can see what’s trending on Twitter from your account under Explore > Trending, or use third-party tools like Google Trends.
12. Be controversial
Twitter thrives on controversy.
Share your hot takes about polarizing topics, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to get tons of comments either agreeing or arguing with your take.
It makes the atmosphere a little toxic, but there’s no doubt it’s a great way to get followers fast.
British comedian Joe Lycett is a master of this strategy. He made national news and Twitter history when he shredded £10,000 on Twitter in protest against David Beckham’s deal to promote the Qatar world cup.
The post blew up thanks to the controversy it generated. Some people applauded the stunt, and others condemned it for being a waste of money. But in the end, it didn’t matter, because Lycett revealed the money was fake—he’d already donated it to an LBGTQ+ charity.
13. Start a Twitter beef (but keep it wholesome)
Aside from controversy, Twitter also thrives on drama.
And some of the most successful Tweets, with the widest reach, have been those that involve ‘Twitter beef’ between two or more influencers/brands/celebrities.
For example, who could forget Greta Thunberg’s infamous slap-down of influencer Andrew Tate:
It’s Thunberg’s most successful Tweet of all time and earned her 3.8 million likes, 500k+ retweets, and tens of thousands of new followers.
Now, obviously, this is a bit of a risky strategy as it can damage your brand reputation if you get it wrong, so try to keep it wholesome.
For example, Wendy’s regularly starts beef with rival fast food chains like McDonald’s, but it’s always tongue-in-cheek rather than nasty.
14. Be funny
Comedy posts tend to do really well on Twitter, and a lot of the posts that go the most viral are those that people find the most funny.
I mean, just look at the engagement figures on this funny Tweet:
Try incorporating some humor into your own Twitter content strategy. Share funny takes, memes, etc. and if it works, stick with it.
15. Mix it up with multimedia content
Visual Tweets that feature photos and videos take up more real estate in your audience’s Twitter feed and demand more attention.
So if you’ve just been sharing text-only Tweets so far, try mixing it up with multimedia content. It’ll help to maximize your organic reach, which in turn, can help you to get more followers.
16. Create threads & long-form Tweets
As we’ve covered already, engagement is the all-important metric on Twitter. The better your engagement, the more people you’ll reach, and the more opportunities you’ll have to earn followers.
And one way to get more engagement on your posts is to create longer content that hooks people in and keeps them reading.
This can take the form of Tweet threads (chains of Tweets in which you tell a story), like this one from @latifnasser, which recently went viral:
Or, if you’re a Twitter Blue subscriber, you could just post long-form Tweets instead of threads thanks to the new 10,000-character limit.
17. Invest in influencer marketing
Another way to get Twitter followers is to get people talking about your Twitter page. Not just on Twitter, but on other social media platforms too.
And an easy way to do this is to invest in influencer marketing. You can use influencer research tools like BuzzStream to find popular influencers in your niche and then reach out to them to explore collaboration opportunities.
18. Utilize polls
If you didn’t already know, you can add polls to your Tweets and comments on Twitter and let other users vote on different answers.
This is another great way to generate more engagement on your posts. And as we’ve discovered already, more engagements get your Tweets more reach and leads to more followers.
19. Respond to your DMs and mentions
You might occasionally receive direct messages on Twitter from users who don’t follow you.
If you do, make sure you always take the time to respond and use it as an opportunity to connect and earn yourself a new follower.
If you’re a large brand and you can have tons of DMs every day, you can use social media inbox tools to stay organized, reply to Twitter chats, and manage your incoming messages across all your socials at scale.
20. Use social listening tools
Social media monitoring tools constantly crawl social media and notify you whenever someone mentions your brand (or any other keyword you want to track).
You can use this to get more Twitter followers by following up with Twitter users who talk about your brand and commenting on their Tweets.
21. Create a ‘snipe list’
A snipe list is a list of creators in your niche that have a similar target audience to you.
The idea is to follow the creators in your snipe list and interact with both them and their followers regularly to attract them to your profile, and ‘steal’ their followers.
You can use Twitter Lists to create your snipe list; it lets you choose what Tweets you want to prioritize in your timeline.
22. Make the most of hashtags
Hashtags are still relevant on Twitter, so don’t neglect them—but don’t overdo them either.
If you’re Tweeting about a trending topic, add the relevant hashtag so that it’s more easily discoverable to other users in the Explore tab.
This will make it more likely for other users to stumble on your Tweets and follow you.
24. Tag other Twitter users
Aside from adding hashtags, you can also try tagging other Twitter accounts with the ‘@’ symbol to increase your discoverability and drive more engagement.
But obviously, you’ll need to do this in moderation. Don’t just @ random users for the sake of it, only tag people if you’re directly talking to them or Tweeting about them.
25. Tweet live at events
If you’re attending an industry event, like a conference, you can try live Tweeting about your experiences.
Make sure you use the event’s hashtag, and other attendees might see your Tweets and become new followers.
26. Run paid ads
Twitter has a bunch of paid advertising options that you can leverage to get more exposure and reach new audiences.
A great option is to launch a followers campaign. With a followers campaign, you’ll promote your account to your target audience and only pay when someone sees the ad and follows you.
Obviously, paid ads aren’t a great long-term strategy as they cost money, but they can help you to get your first few thousand followers and get the ball rolling so that your future posts have more organic reach.
27. Make use of Twitter analytics
You can use social media analytics tools to gather deep insights about your Twitter account, and use these insights to inform your strategy.
For example, which Tweets have earned you the most followers in the past? Find out and focus on these types of posts going forward.
Note: You can access your Twitter account’s analytics for free by going to analytics.twitter.com but you’ll get more useful data with a dedicated tool like Sendible.
28. Leverage your blog
If you have a blog or website that gets a decent amount of organic traffic, you can use it to funnel traffic to your Twitter profile and get more followers.
An easy way to do this is to simply add a follow button to your website footer.
But you can also try adding a ‘share on Twitter’ option to your blog posts, or even implement pop-ups asking people to follow your Twitter.
If you use WordPress, these social share plugins make it easy. Some are free.
29. Promote your Twitter profile IRL
Aside from promoting your Twitter on your blog/website, you can also promote your Twitter in real life.
For example, you can add your Twitter handle to your business cards and hand them out at industry events. Or if you’re a brand with a business premises, promote your Twitter on-site.
You can also try adding a link to your Twitter profile in your email signatures and newsletters.
30. Don’t buy followers
The last tip we want to leave you with is this: Don’t be tempted to buy Twitter followers.
Artificially inflating your follower count like this doesn’t work, because the bots that follow you aren’t genuine, engaged users.
And as such, having tons of fake followers can actually harm your growth by giving you poor engagement metrics, which encourages the algorithm to limit your visibility.
The only reason to ever consider paying for followers is for social proof—it’s easier to convince others to follow you if it looks like you already have a following.
But the tradeoff for the damage it does to your engagement signals means it just isn’t worth it. Plus, it’s not allowed per Twitter’s platform manipulation and spam policy.
Bonus infographic
You’ll find some extra tips mixed into this infographic below. You’re welcome to republish this providing you offer appropriate credit and link back to this article.
Final thoughts
That concludes our guide on how to get followers on Twitter. We hope you found it helpful.
Now, it’s time to start building your Twitter audience.
However, if you’d like to learn more, check out our guides on how to build a following on other social networks like these:
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. If you click on certain links we may make a commission.
