how to get more engagement on twitter

Twitter is a powerful social network that has transformed this blog and others as well. However, when it comes to using Twitter, many people get confused. They do not know how to create quality tweets with only 140 characters, build a strong following, or interact with the followers that they have. In this blog post, I will provide numerous tips that cover all three of these aspects on Twitter and others as well.

1. Retweet other people’s tweets. If you share other people’s tweets, then others will be more likely to retweet other people’s tweets. If you have not retweeted anyone else’s tweet in one week, then you are using Twitter wrong.
2. Grow a targeted following. A targeted following is the best kind of following to have. These kinds of followers are the ones who are interested in your tweets before they even start to read them.
3. Ask questions. Asking questions will encourage people to respond with their answers. This will allow you to engage more with your followers.
4. Answer questions to join a conversation. If you want to engage with new people, then look for the people who are asking the question. By answering these people’s questions with a tweet, you may get some new followers, but the conversation will more than likely continue.
5. Tweet every 30 minutes. Tweeting every 30 minutes allowed me to build a strong presence on Twitter. No, it’s not annoying to tweet this many times every day.
6. Better yet, tweet every 20 minutes. The more you tweet, the more times people are going to see you. Tweeting every 20 minutes allows almost all of your followers who logged in on that day to see one of your tweets. I didn’t annoy more people by tweeting this much. In fact, I gained more people and saw more engagement for my tweets.
7. Schedule tweets. The only way you are going to tweet every 20-30 minutes is if you schedule tweets in advance.
8. Get HootSuite Pro. It will make your life much easier and save you a lot of time. I am able to schedule 36 tweets in just 6 clicks.
9. Tweet about your blog 80% of the time. If you want to drive more traffic to your blog from Twitter, you need to tweet about your blog at least 80% of the time. Only tweeting about your blog 20% of the time is a mistake. Your followers won’t care if your blog posts are filled with quality content.
10. Tweet pictures. Pictures have been proven to increase retweets, favorites, and conversations you have with your followers. Basically, it’s something that you must do.
11. Tweet at the moment. Don’t schedule a question! If you get answers right away, you can extend those conversations by replying as soon as possible.
12. Get the Twitter mobile app. The Twitter mobile app allows you to tweet at the moment no matter where you are. If you’re in the parking lot waiting for someone to get to the car, you can send out a tweet with the mobile app and respond to people in real time.
13. Use Twitter’s search engine to find targeted people. It’s cool, reliable, and easy to find targeted people with Twitter’s search engine.
14. Follow journalists. If you follow these journalists and build a strong presence for yourself on the web, then these journalists will be more likely to write about you in a popular magazine.
15. Follow the right people. Follow targeted people who are likely to follow back, people that you like, people you want to (and can) build connections with, tweet awesome stuff, and/or the leaders of your niche. Don’t follow the people who are not going to provide more value for your Twitter experience.
16. Tell everyone about what you do in your niche in your bio. You bio is a place for you to tell people what you are an expert at.
17. Also tell people about all of your accomplishments. The accomplishments are proof that you are an expert. The social media expert who got on the Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Users list looks much better than the social media expert with 500 followers.
18. Get more words in your bio by using commas and incomplete sentences. Your English teacher is not going to come and haunt you if you use sentence fragments and do not have a verb in your bio. Simply list everything you do as well as your accomplishments by separating everything with commas.
19. Use TwitterCounter to keep track of statistics. The best way to grow on Twitter is to know when you did well and when you did bad. TwitterCounter allows you to see how many followers you gain for up to 6 months (free version). It’s a nice tool to utilize.
20. Use Tweriod to see when your followers are on Twitter. Using Tweriod will allow you to identify the times when most of your followers on Twitter. Now you know when to send out your most important tweet.
21. Include RT or r/t at the end of some of your tweets. Including RT or r/t at the end of some of your tweets does lead to more retweets. However, if you overuse RT or r/t, its effect will ware off, and you will not get as many retweets if you include RT or r/t at the end of your tweets.
22. Thank the people who share your blog posts. Thanking people for sharing your blog posts is an unexpected act of courtesy that can result in this person sharing more of your blog posts and being grateful that you thanked them.
23. Favorite tweets on occasion. Talking with someone is better than clicking the little star.
24. Use more verbs and fewer nouns. You will get more retweets this way.
25. Use hashtags. Using hashtags also has a good effect on getting more retweets. However, any tweet with more than two hashtags does not get retweeted as much.
26. Make your tweets 70-100 characters long. This is just another way to get more retweets. 70-100 characters seems to be the sweet spot.
27. Do not connect your Facebook account with your Twitter account. It’s annoying for your friends and followers on Facebook. It’s not worth it.
28. Use your Twitter account to promote your other social networks. If Twitter is your biggest social network, it may take a small push to turn your other social networks into something extraordinary as well.
29. Promote your Twitter account on your other social networks. Getting multiple small pushes to leverage your Twitter account can lead to something incredible.
30. Pin a tweet to the top of your profile. Make it the tweet that you want everyone to see. Choose wisely.
31. Focus on one specific niche. People follow specific people. If you scatter around from niche to niche, people will not know why they are following you.
32. Tweet motivational quotes. No matter what your niche is, motivational quotes always increase engagement.
33. Get in touch with the leaders in your niche. Leaders chat with other leaders. Show people that you are a leader by talking with the leaders. In addition, you will be able to learn new things by talking with the leaders of your niche.
34. Tweet a tip of the day. This allows you to provide your followers with easy to access knowledge about your niche.
35. Use Twitter to make a difference. Vivienne Harr has done that quite nicely with her Make A Stand Lemon Aid. She’s also six years younger than me.
36. Take advantage of trending topics. If you say something clever, you will get more retweets for that tweet than your typical tweets. Trending topics are popular which means when you get discovered, it will have a big impact on your engagement.
37. Follow others instead of trying to be a rock star. Don’t be the guy or gal who wants to have 100,000 followers and only follow 10 people. It doesn’t work that way, and even if you got that to happen, you are not using Twitter to its fullest potential (building connections).
38. Use Bitly to shorten links. *Almost* any method you can use to save characters is a good method. Bitly links also come with detailed statistics.
39. Hire someone to create your background. I hired someone to design my book cover and saw unprecedented success in my book sales. Hiring someone to create an awesome Twitter background for as little as $5 on Fiverr can make you look more professional.
40. Follow back the people who follow you. This is all about building the connections that you have gained through Twitter.
41. Do not use automated DMs. That is, unless, you like getting unfollowed.
42. Properly use DMs to contact some of your followers. Personalized messages to a few followers strengthens the connections you have with those followers. In addition, you can have long conversations by sending DMs back and forth to one of your followers.
43. Turn your Twitter followers into fans. Tweet incredible content and build your credibility. Become someone who your followers would be proud to show off to their friends.
44. Become a guest blogger. Guest blogging is an easy way to get more exposure and followers on your Twitter account. In addition, becoming a guest blogger builds on your preeminence.
45. Get people to interview you. You credibility gets boosted and you get more followers at the same time.
46. Interview other people. For most people, this tip is easier than Tip #45. The people you interview will be very likely to follow you on Twitter and tell their followers about you.
47. Give yourself goals to aim for. Instead of striving to gain more followers, strive to gain 10 followers every day. Then go up to 20 followers every day and keep on building.
48. Proofread your tweets before you send them out. It sounds like something completely unnecessary, but it is important. You would be shocked with how many typos are on Twitter.
49. Look at the Twitter strategy you already have in place. Identify its strengths and areas of improvement.
50. Don’t argue with anyone on Twitter. It’s wrong and makes you look bad.
51. Regularly check your profile and keep it up to date. The information you wrote on your bio three months ago could be outdated. You could also be doing something more remarkable than anything on your bio and may want to add that in your bio.
52. Only list one person for Follow Friday. Follow Friday is overrated, but if you participate in it, only list one person for every Follow Friday. No one likes to see a list of 10 usernames with no motives to follow those people.
53. Review your Twitter apps to make sure there are no problems. That’s how you get hacked. I got hacked once because I did not review my apps carefully. Learn from my heartache.
54. Use ManageFlitter. It’s a great tool that allows you to identify the people who are not following you, the people who are following you, and other cool features as well.
55. Use Tweepi. Tweepi helps you grow a targeted following by displaying a list of someone’s followers based on last tweet, follow back ratio (the most important), number of followers, and more!
56. Look at your Bitly links and continue tweeting the links that get clicked on the most. If people liked it the first time, they’ll like it again. If you see a decline in clicks for one of your Bitly links, then that link needs to take a break.
57. Have perseverance. Remember that Rome was not built in 1 day. Neither was anyone’s Twitter presence.
58. Don’t ask to be followed. Instead of asking people to click the follow button and build a connection made from pity, build your presence on Twitter.
59. Don’t ask for a shout out. Just don’t. Ever.
60. Don’t send out boring tweets. If you send out boring tweets such as status updates of you walking your dog or something else, it will bore the reader.
61. You should tweet about one thing 80% of the time. Stay focused on one niche. You can go out of your niche sometimes, but use this 80% rule to make sure most of your tweets are the ones that your followers want to read.
62. Don’t think about lost followers and connections. Instead of looking at what you lost, look at what you have gained.
63. Know why people follow you and would want to read your tweets. Knowing is the first step towards seeing better results.
64. Check your notifications three times every day. By checking your notifications three times every day, you will be able to reply to more of your followers faster. If you check your notifications more than three times every day, then that’s even better.
65. Use a real location in your bio. There’s no harm in adding your location, and it can result in strong connections with people who either live near by or used to live where you live now.
66. Raise your Klout Score. People look at your Klout score to determine how influential you are on the web…and Twitter!
67. Have a good bio picture. The bio picture is one of the most important factors when someone decides whether someone will follow you or not.
68. Use Twitter every day. If you want to become successful on Twitter, you need to be dedicated.
69. Look at what the leaders of your niche tweet. Then see if you can tweet something similar.
70. Tweet slideshares and infographics. Those happen to work very well on Twitter.

Those are 70 Twitter tips. Chances are you will choose some of these tips from the list and implement them one at the time. In order to get the best out of this article, I highly recommend that you revisit this article once a week so you can see how many of these tips you are implementing. By implementing all of these tips consistently for a long period of time, you will eventually be able to gain thousands of followers on Twitter every week.