How to Get Followers on Twitter (X) in 2024 [20 Tips & Tricks for Your Twitter Strategy]

No matter how much we say vanity metrics don't matter, we still want our brand's social media profiles to grow.

This can seem like quite a challenge, especially when you are just starting out.

However, out of all the social media platforms, there are a couple of factors that make Twitter (or X as it's now called by nobody but its employees)  especially business-friendly and easy to grow all thanks to knowing how to get more Twitter followers. If you are looking for a guide, we are here to provide you with the key Twitter tips without any recommendations on how to buy Twitter followers - just honest content and profile optimization.

I will begin by saying that Twitter is a perfect platform to target growth for many reasons:

So how do you actually grow the fruitful interest in your Twitter for free: without buying followers or paying for advertising? You need to understand what makes your audience click Follow.

How to get more Twitter followers: Ultimate Twitter follower guide.

There are three main pillars when it comes to platform marketing: profile, content, and engagement. To get more followers, you need to:

In this article, we go through each of these pillars and give you tips, hacks, and tricks on how to get followers and increase Twitter interaction boosting your strategy. 

Optimize your Twitter profile

Your profile data is the first thing Twitter followers see when they go to your account, see your personality, so your Twitter account should respond to several requirements: 

With all this in mind, let's make sure every component of your account is designed to get more Twitter followers and corresponds to these requirements. 

1. Choose a perfect profile picture

A picture says a thousand words and your profile picture says a thousand words about your brand personality: make sure they are good words. Brands regularly use their logo as a profile picture — this helps with branding and raises brand awareness.

You can have fun with it by changing your profile picture for special events like Christmas or Pride Month if your followers celebrate these occasions.
Obviously, if you are a professional who wants to promote and sell their services on Twitter, it's much better to have a photo of you as your profile pic. People connect much more easily with other people than with things and businesses, and Twitter users are no different. If you're a freelancer and knowing how to get followers is your priority – just tweet from an account with your face on it. It builds trust and makes your tweets more genuine.

You can add your brand colors in the background and add logos and other brand visuals to your header instead.

2. Make a creative Twitter profile header

Since we started talking about all things profile headers, let's see how to choose the best one for your platform account. Your profile header gives you a bit more space to work with meaning you can fit more data, getting more remarkable and intelligible for a user and building relationships quicker: so I strongly suggest you use both text and images. It should still have your brand colors on it and your logo.

You can use graphic tools such as Canva or Visme to design attractive graphics for your profile. 

Here's Awario's Twitter header: it explains what Awario is and uses our logo and colors to tie everything together. It also looks very cute!

3. Write an eye-catching bio

You can only include 160 characters in your Twitter bio, so make them count. Your bio should briefly describe what your brand does in your brand voice. It also should mention your brand hashtags if you have any. In some cases, it's a good idea to specify what you tweet about: industry news, your own products, your business story, even cases from your customers if they give consent to share details, and so on. 

You can include calls to action like follow us, click the link in bio to learn more, or join our community in the bio. This helps with increasing our Twitter engagement and conversions. 

4. Add your location (for local businesses)

If you run a brick-and-mortar business or target a specific area, stating your location in the bio is crucial. Not only it helps your audience, but it also allows Twitter algorithm to suggest your tweets as local news and select them for Topics about your city/area. That way you'll appear in their feed even if they don't follow you (yet), so don't neglect this opportunity.

5. Link your website or a Twitter-specific landing page

Of course, anyone's Twitter business strategy welcomes conversions — and they are only able to happen if Twitter followers go to your website. You should always link your website or a landing page where people can learn more about your company and maybe purchase your products. Don't forget to add UTM parameters to your link to track the involvement of your Twitter followers. 

Creating a landing page specifically for Twitter traffic makes sense if you run a Twitter marketing campaign with specific goals in mind. For example, if you're amplifying your goal is to get more newsletter subscribers, it's better to add the link to your newsletter in the bio. However, if you want to promote several links, pay attention to the next Twitter hacks.

6. Pin a selling tweet

If you're annoyed by the limitations of the bio and only one profile link, here's a perfect Twitter hack for you — a pinned tweet. Pinned tweets are great because not only you get 280 more characters to deliver your message, but you can also add another link that will stand out for a Twitter follower.

A perfect pinned tweet should have the second call to action. For example, if your bio encourages Twitter followers to add your account to their lists, your pinned tweet might offer them to check out your website. If you're trying to develop a Twitter community, it might be a good idea to pin the schedule of your Twitter Chats or Twitter Spaces streams (more on that later), and your Twitter tags. 

Another finding for your Twitter strategy is to make your pinned tweet a beginning of a thread: this makes Twitter followers curious to learn more about you and your Twitter content.

7. Consider verification

Twitter verification is marketers' favorite topic to complain about. First, Twitter closed its verification process in 2017, then they promised to reopen the verification process with no clear deadline in sight, and finally, they made the verification purchasable - and available to anyone.

Even with all the jokes, having a verified Twitter account makes you stand out to followers and users, so it definitely helps if you are eager to know how to get followers. Make sure your Twitter threads draw attention by getting that blue check mark!

Focus on your social engagement

It is recommended to focus on your Twitter engagement, and it’s not just about Twitter analytics (although you should definitely track those things as well). While your engagement rate is a good sign of how many actual followers you have since fake followers regularly don't engage with your tweets, engagement is also the thing you need to do, not just track.

Twitter feed is a two-way street — you engage with others and your potential Twitter follower starts engaging with you. That's why it's not enough posting high-quality content or optimize your Twitter profile. You need to keep getting truly social to succeed on this social network — and here's how to do it. 

8. Tag other Twitter accounts

What's the best tool to analyze your Twitter performance?

What's the best tool to analyze your Twitter performance?

Here are five for you to check out!@AwarioApp
@TweetDeck @TweetBinder @TwitonomyApp
@UnionMetrics https://t.co/T4OqU6DQEF

— Awario (@AwarioApp) April 6, 2021

Mentioning other accounts is always the best way to gain new followers and do it fast, thus Twitter followers are no exception. We proved it ourselves: Awario tweets that tag other brands and users, even bots get the most impressions and engagement. You can learn more about the Twitter lessons we learned from our experience in this article. 

But who should you tag? Here's a list of types of accounts you can tag in your tweets:

9. Make Twitter lists

Speaking about lists, a Twitter List is a great tool to segment your audience and design specific Twitter strategies to engage with them. A Twitter List unites several Twitter accounts based on one parameter. For example, we at Awario curate lists for digital marketers, social media marketers, agency owners, social media marketing experts, and social media marketing tools.

For a successful research of accounts for your Twitter List, you can and should use the Awario app. This way you can be sure you find all the influential Twitter accounts in your niche.

All you need to do is build a monitoring alert with your industry keywords and Twitter as the main source.

Awario will immediately start analyzing Twitter content and will find every Twitter account having conversations about these topics. You can then sort them by reach to see the most popular profiles first, hit follow, and add them to your list.

You can also use Awario to find Twitter trends that are currently popular and hop on them. Sign up for Awario's free trial and build your Twitter Lists!

10. Always reply to tweets about your brand

It seems obvious, but many marketers make this mistake — they only reply when there's a direct request or a comment with a question from a Twitter follower. But, if you're trying to grow your Twitter following, always replying is a must. Whether a profile shared your content, commented something nice on your tweet, or praised your product without tagging you — say something nice in the comments. That helps people discover you on Twitter if they don't follow you and raises brand awareness.

To make sure you don't miss those untagged mentions or tweets linking to your website, try the Awario app. You can simply build a brand monitoring alert with your brand name as the keyword and a link to your domain, and you'll get all the tweets (and retweets) related to your brand in your Mention feed in real time. 

11. Ask questions

This is another surprising hack we've discovered through experience: questions lead to more followers. They encourage engagement from your followers and thus increase Twitter popularity. 

You might have noticed that your feed regularly shows tweets from an account which you are not a Twitter follower of. This happens because a person you do follow replied to this tweet — now imagine if it were your tweet that unexpectedly turned up in someone's feed.

12. Use quote retweet instead of regular retweets

Retweeting is an essential part of Twitter, but if you're running a brand account, the quote retweet button should be your default retweet button. This way you make sure your followers still see your brand first AND you attract attention from the account you retweet. They will be curious to see what you added to your tweet, check your profile, and maybe follow you! 

Another hack is to quote retweet your own tweets: you make them relevant again and make sure your new followers see them. This way, you can remind your followers of the best-performing tweets with a fresh spin.

13. Engage in Twitter chats

Twitter Chats can be high-quality community-building tools: they make you learn more about your industry and Twitter audience. Basically, A Twitter Chat is a scheduled event where you can respond to questions using a Twitter Chat hashtag.

Want to learn how to optimize your social media content strategy? Join me and @SFerika on the #TwitterSmarter chat tomorrow at 1pm ET. pic.twitter.com/ekwDL79sAO

— Madalyn Sklar  Digital Marketing since 1996 (@MadalynSklar) May 5, 2021

Chat participation in your industry exposes you to the Twitter audience you target. Answer questions with your own unique take and grow your Twitter!

You can also start your own Twitter Chat, but if your follower number is relatively small (and it probably is since you're reading this article) it might take time to take off. Invite an influencer with a bigger audience to host your chat — that way you make sure to engage people, increase Twitter interaction and gain more followers. 

Check out our list of Marketing Twitter Chats to join to learn more about digital marketing and find your community on Twitter.

Create content that keeps people interested

While your Twitter profile and your interactions with a current or possible Twitter follower may raise your brand awareness, content is what makes people stay. That's why to get Twitter followers and actually keep them you need to post amazing, engaging, and exciting content. Here are some tips on how to do it!

14. Mix up entertainment, education, and selling

There's a famous social media marketing rule that states that you should have 80% non-promotional content to 20% promotional. That means that if you tweet 10 times a day, eight of your tweets shouldn't sell (at least not directly). 

This is a great rule to start your marketing strategy. Make sure you don't just post to sell — you need to bring value to your followers and entertain them. Don't be afraid to make jokes and use humor no matter the niche you're in. If the CIA posts funny tweets, why can't your business be witty on social media?

Sorry for not following you back @TheEllenShow. But if you visit us maybe we can take a selfie? #twitterversary

— CIA (@CIA) July 7, 2014

15. Establish your Twitter routine

There are two questions that you need to answer when you develop your Twitter marketing strategy: how actively should you tweet, when to tweet, if you should tweet daily and so on. 

Twitter is a very fast-paced platform. According to Moz, a tweet's lifespan is 18 minutes. That means that if people don't see your tweet during these 18 minutes after you posted it, it's likely they won't see it at all.

That's why the more actively you tweet, the better. However, don't be spammy — if you have nothing to say, it's better to make sure that you have a consistent schedule to follow with a smaller number of tweets daily. Consistency is key. It's better to tweet five times each day than exhaust yourself with 20 tweets for a week and then give up. You can use a free Twitter scheduler such as TweetDeck to stay consistent. 

What's the best time to tweet? The simple answer is when your audience is on Twitter. The more complicated answer is to check your Twitter analytics and see your Best Time to Tweet based on Twitter's analysis of your profile. You can access these Insights through Twitter Media Studio.

16. Use hashtags

While you can't follow hashtags on Twitter like you can on Instagram, LinkedIn or other social media platforms, they still affect your reach. First of all, Twitter's algorithm takes tags into consideration and can mark your profile to other audiences as recommended based on the hashtags you use, even a bot accumulating information similar to yours will notice you and retweet you thanks to your hashtags.

Secondly, Twitter Topics may feature tweets based on the hashtags included and once again bring them to a new audience.

And thirdly, using hashtags allow you to highlight certain words and phrases and make them stand out visually so it's easier for your future Twitter follower to see what your content is about. So don't forget to use hashtags in your posts to get more followers on Twitter.

17. Diversify your content on Twitter with different media

Speaking about visuals, let's talk about media on Twitter.

Since Twitter platform has a character limit, you can use pictures, videos, and GIFs to deliver your message to a Twitter follower in its full form. To make your posts more interactive, you can add a cheeky Twitter poll once in a while - it's also a great way to collect opinions from your audience.

Twitter also offers you several other media tools including polls and audio recording (available in test mode). Here's an example of a Twitter poll that got a lot of engagement:

Not to be controversial, but… Is there really a difference between B2B and B2C?

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) May 5, 2021

Take advantage of all these different kinds of media and make your content diverse! For example, a Twitter infographic can present old content in a fresh way, saving you time spent on developing new content.

Check out our articles about GIF marketing and video marketing to get some global tips on how to use these media in your Twitter strategy.

18. Use Twitter Spaces

And since I mentioned many media tools Twitter offers, let's talk about Twitter Spaces. Right now this feature is available to anyone with 400+ followers — and you can use it to get more. Just like with Chats, join interesting Spaces and have conversations with people. Be friendly and give good advice — and people will follow. We wrote a comprehensive guide on how to use Twitter Spaces full of tricks and hacks, so check it out if you haven't already!

19. Amplify your global reach through influencer marketing

I briefly touched on influencer marketing when I was talking about chats already, but it's not the only way to collaborate with influencers. You can launch an influencer marketing campaign, tag each other in tweets, cross-promote your content, and more.

Using Awario app makes Twitter influencers in your niche easily searchable. The tool has a dedicated Influencers report that ranks all the influencers in your niche by popularity and how relevant they are to your brand. Learn more about discovering Twitter influencers with Awario in our article. 

20. Live tweet an event

One of Twitter's main use cases is live-tweeting. Every Twitter follower loves to discuss current events and live tweet them using a specific hashtag. Joining them can give you tons of exposure and potential followers.

Best booth activation ever #SMMW20

— Hootsuite 🦉 (@hootsuite) March 2, 2020

Think of events that might interest your audience: conferences, presentations, live premieres. In 2021, most events are digitalized, so you don't even have to be there in the flesh. Use the event hashtag to tweet relevant commentary, ask questions, and don't forget to engage with other audiences tweeting about it. 

In conclusion

Trying to grow your social media profiles may seem like an overwhelmingly tall task. But there's a simple recipe to how to get Twitter followers here made of three main ingredients: profile, content, and engagement. All you need is to follow it and stay consistent (which is probably the hardest part). To help you stay consistent follow the tips from our "How to get followers on Twitter guide". followers to gain followers