Getting started with Twitter: Gaining followers

Everyone is looking for a magic formula to gaining followers and boost engagement on social media platforms. And while there is no single solution, there is a number of ways that will help you boost your Twitter game.
People discover brands on Twitter in few ways. According to Twitter research:
- 66.4% discovered a new brand on Twitter;
- 39.8% found brands via recommendations in the “who to follow” sections;
- 37.5% saw a retweet of their tweet;
- 36% saw a friend @reply;
- 35.7% saw promoted Tweet;
- 35% saw a Tweet in a #hashtag conversation;
- 33.6% saw another brand or business mention them;
- 31.5% they followed an account I follow.
This insight clearly shows what works to attract the audience, but here are few more suggestions to help you turn it into reality.
What you post matters
Various different researches confirmed that the content that performs the best on Twitter can be categorised into:
- News – 40% of people use Twitter to find out about breaking news & 39 % to keep up with news in general.
- Video – 82% of Twitter users watch videos.
- Images – these increase a post engagement and retweets by 150%.
- Twitter polls – people love the polls for its anonymity and ease of use. Especially when the topic covered is important or interesting for them, so if you want to boost your engagement, use them polls.
- Infographics, graphics & images with quotes – these are very ‘retweetable’ since they share interesting information or something users associate with, in a visual and compelling way.
In general, visual posts are much more shareable than text-only so bear that in mind when posting.
People enjoy positivity and that’s what they want to associate your brand with, so try to post things that are uplifting, positive or entertaining.
If you want to know more, check out our article about what to post on Twitter.
How active you are matters too
This one is a no brainer. If you tweet more throughout the day, the chances are you reach a broader range of your followers. These, by reacting or retweeting your posts spread your brand awareness to their followers. As some of the big social media players estimated, you should post on average 15 times in a day for the optimal reach.
When you post matters
Read more about it here. Beat in mind if Twitter thinks you are relevant and timely, it will feature your tweets on other users’ timelines.
Get involved in Twitter chat rooms
Have you heard of these before? Twitter chats are essentially a planned repeating conversations that happen around a certain subject with a use of a specific hashtags. You can find my suggested Twitter chats here. By participating in these chats you have the opportunity to connect in real-time with travellers and other users and share your knowledge and expertise. Respond to users when you have something interesting to add, prompt questions and show your expertise on the subject. There is a number of destination-related chats too, so check out ones that refer to yours!
Host your own chats
If you are feeling adventurous enough, host your own Twitter chat. Make sure it’s specific and relevant to your target audience and spread the word out to get the engagement. You might need to get your colleagues heavily involved to start with.
Another way to attract an audience and start a conversation is to host an #AMA (Ask Me Anything). This very interesting method is extremely popular on Reddit however people use it on Twitter too. Be wary though, people use it as an opportunity to find answers to pressing and difficult questions, so if you don’t feel comfortable with it, stay away from it.
Monitor Twitter mentions
It’s a no-brainer that you need to monitor any user activity that mentions your property on Twitter – regardless of whether it is in a positive or negative way. Users are more likely to have a positive outlook on your brand when they see you listen to them.
You should however go a step further. This can be a quite time consuming activity, however there are tools available to help you out. In order to connect with your target audience, actively seek them out. Monitor on Twitter any mentions (beyond #’s and @’s) and questions with regards to your area, holiday resorts/hotels, your competition, and holidaying in general.
Follow what’s trending
While this might be less relevant to hotels than it is to local businesses like restaurants, services and shops. If you however know your target is based in a specific location, like LAX or NYC, you can change the location by editing the trends section.

Use hashtags
Twitter has made hashtags so popular in our lives we #everything. This little symbol allows to identify the subject of your content, search for content or follow a trending topic (or a conversation in one of the chat groups). It is a great way to boost your visibility on Twitter and reach audiences interested in subjects you’re referring to. Twitter developed this useful infographic on how to use hashtags on its platform.
Hashtagify gives you the option to search for a hashtag worth using. In the Search box, type in your hashtag (hotel, for example) and press Enter. You will be served with the most popular related hashtags. By default, you see the results in Basic Mode view, which looks like a mind map.
There is also plenty of tools to help you monitor hashtag performance. Brand24 has covered it in more detail on their website.
Promote your Twitter outside of the platform
There is a number of ways to do so. You can start my regularly mentioning your n other channels like Facebook, Instagram or in emails & newsletters. You can also drive people to your Twitter by offering them something exclusive on this channel only. Add your social media channels to your website, on all the relevant pages like About Us, Contact Us or on a side bar of your blog.
Offer something exclusive to Twitter
We all love special offers and it is oftentimes a reason we sign up to this newsletter or follow a particular brand. If you want to grow your following offer something that’s exclusive to Twitter.
What works equally well is running contests and riddles to get users over to your account. You can offer them a discount, free stays, upgrades or simply a feature on other social media channel.
Import your contacts
Go into who to follow section on your desktop. You will be able to follow people from your Outlook’s or Google’s contact list. You can also use search and look for people by their handle or name & surname. If you have a mailing list there is no way to upload it directly to Twitter, however you could upload them to your Google contacts and then update the Twitter list via who to follow section.
Find similar audiences
While Twitter does a great deal o work on algorithmically suggest you users to follow, these might not be necessarily people who are your target market. So how do you find people who might be interested in your product?
- Use Twitter’s search tool to find audiences with similar interests.
- Interact or follow people who follow your competitors or like-minded/complementary brands.
- Interact with influencers that attract the same audience.
Advertise
If you are planning to spend some money on advertising Twitter has build a great set of tools that will help you promote your account to others based on their location, keywords, interests and accounts they follow.
Read more from our Twitter series by visiting our articles on: