How to Get More Twitter Followers Organically

Social media is not my forte, but I’ve found new hope for myself in Twitter.

It’s not my first instinct to jump on Facebook or Twitter when something happens in my life,

But ever since I started this little blog, I’ve made a conscious effort to be more vocal about randomness, whether anyone cares or not. Although I’m not nearly as involved in the Twitterverse as I’d like to be, I’ve learned a little trick for getting more followers.

When I first started Gettin’ My Healthy On, it was sad to see 5 likes on my Facebook page and around 10 Twitter followers. I really wanted to grow my fan base on social media, but I didn’t know how to do so without upping my awesomeness to an impossible level overnight or…being shady (apparently you can buy likes and such?). Well I am proud to say after 1.5 years of blogging, I have officially reached over 3,000 followers on Twitter!

This was only possible because of the Twitter mindset of: You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.

On Facebook you can like a bunch of pages, but that doesn’t mean they’ll like yours back. I’ve noticed on Twitter, if you follow a bunch of people, many of them will follow you back…just because. It’s weirdly satisfying to get more followers and reach milestones like 1,000…and so on.

Here’s what I do…

I add around 5 people every day…and it doesn’t take much effort at all. I rarely even seek people out. I do most of it through email.

If you want to set it up like this: Go into your Twitter settings, then to Email Notifications, check the boxes “I’m followed by someone new” and “Suggestions based on my recent follows.” By doing this, it’ll be easy to follow people back and find others you may be interested on (based on who else you follow) because they’ll be emailed to you! I mainly follow people who dedicate their tweets to healthy living, fitness, food, blogging, or something similar. In other words, I try to follow most people who follow me, but some people I don’t because I know I’m not interested in their tweets.

Here’s the catch:

If you follow too many people without having enough followers, Twitter won’t let you follow any more people until more people follow you. It can be really frustrating, which is why I started to slowly unfollow some people I didn’t think would ever follow me back. I hate that I have to unfollow people because I don’t mind following them, but Twitter doesn’t like you following a million pages when no one wants to follow you back. Therefore, unfollowing becomes necessary if you want to grow your fan base (unless you get an insane amount of traffic to your blog and people want to follow you because you’re mega cool).

I used to unfollow people in a really complicated way — because Twitter doesn’t flat out say “this is who isn’t following you back” — but about a week ago, I discovered there are sites that tell you exactly that.

I’ve been using Friend or Follow, but I’ve heard Just Unfollow is great too. In the picture below, you can see my Friend or Follow information:

It tells me:

Following: Who I’m following (and they’re not following me back)
Fans: Who follows me (and I’m not following them)
Friends: We follow each other
Unfollowers: Who has recently unfollowed me
Followers: Who has recently followed me

It’s free and is incredibly easy to just click “follow” or “unfollow.” I’ve been trying to follow more people who follow me (because I want to support those who support me). But I’m also unfollowing some random people whose tweets I’m not interested in. I don’t want to be a jerk, but…sometimes you just have to do it.

OKAY,

I think I’m done with my super long Twitter talk. In summary, follow a few people every day, and many will follow you back. Keep doing this over a long period of time, and you’ll see a consistent growth in your Twitter followers.

El fin.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already, so I can follow you back!