Grow Your Twitter / X Follower Numbers With These 40 Proven Tips

How do I get more followers on Twitter / X? It could be for your own profile or a company profile that you manage. This is a question that comes around regularly, especially since we spend a lot of our time helping clients drive more engagement on Twitter / X.

In this post we’ll me looking at all the techniques you can personally implement to drive more organic growth of Twitter / X followers (outside normal Gleam promotions). There’s a lot here, so buckle up!

I know this may seem trivial but it is often the best way to kick start your X account. Simply ask users on existing channels to follow you on Twitter / X.

Good places to cross promote accounts:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Your Newsletter

Here’s a good example of cross promotion at the end of a YouTube video:

Users to your site will often look for ways to follow you on social networks, so make sure you include your buttons in a prominent place.

You’ll often see websites either include these buttons in the header or footer. Being above the fold naturally gets more exposure but it pays to experiment.

If you send a lot of emails then you can easily get your personal or business Twitter / X account in front of people by adding it to your signature.

If you have any company material like business cards, pamphlets, customer facing collateral then make sure you have a prominent spot for Twitter / X & other important social accounts.

Hashtags can be a great way to drive awareness around a particular event, product launch or company slogan.

But it’s not always as simple to just create one, you need to promote it, make it align with your marketing campaigns & also choose something that can’t backfire (i.e. asking questions that leave you open to trolling & ridicule).

An example of a hashtag campaign that backfired and seriously missed the mark is IBM's #HackAHairdryer campaign. It was an attempt to encourage women in STEM, but received so much backlash for being sexist and patronizing that they had to publicly apologize and discontinue the campaign.

In a recent survey by Lithium 72% of customers expect brands to respond within an hour to complaints posted on X.

Telstra in Australia are a great example of a company that responds quickly to issues via Social Media.

Spotify has an official support channel on Twitter / X for issues, this helps keep issues off their main account but also shows transparency in how they handle support requests on Twitter / X.

This is perhaps one of the most underrated (and unused) techniques out there. Businesses often don’t leverage their own thank-you pages to grow various social channels.

Blog Posts are usually some of the most Tweetable content that you have. Make sure you make it easy for users to do this when they reach a critical part of an article.

Controlling the content that users tweet about can sometimes really work well. Especially if you gets users to share interesting stats or quotes.

If you get positive comments or Tweets about your service on Twitter / X you can favourite them. Twitter / X has various ways to allow you to use these favourites – one way is to display them on your site as testimonials.

SkinnyMe Tea uses the Twitter API to pull their favourite tweets, then applies custom styles so it looks like a natural part of their site.

Woobox has a Facebook app that allows you to add your Twitter / X profile to your Facebook page. A great way to show Facebook users what to expect when they follow you on Twitter / X.

Your Twitter / X followers are spread out all over the world, knowing the best time to engage them with tweets will greatly increase your chances of being retweeted.

For example, here at Gleam we’re in Australia – but the majority of our followers are in the UK & USA. We need to ensure we’re scheduling tweets in a way that maximizes our exposure.

There’s lots of potential contest ideas you can run on Twitter / X to keep your fans engaged.

Here at Gleam we offer a free platform that allows you to run extremely flexible & engaging Twitter / X contests. See how Beardbrand grew his Twitter / X followers by 1500% in just 2 weeks using Gleam 🙂

Here’s a quick Twitter / X competition demo to have a play around with:

If you like this competition & think your business can benefit from using Gleam, feel free to signup and start running awesome campaigns.

Finding influencers on Twitter / X that can help promote your product or service is one of the best ways to grow your following. Moz has a cool tool called Azemahle Twitter / X Nivea that can help you find influencers to approach.

We’ve found that signup rates & adoption from this sort of endorsement far outweighs traditional advertising.

Twitter / X profiles that have a picture on average have 1000% more followers than those without one. This also means that there’s a potential to drive even more followers with the right images, do you add your company logo or try a personal picture?

If you’re trying to appeal to a specific type of user or market then having a powerful bio is extremely important. For example we’re trying to reach people in Melbourne & also trying to connect with growth hackers (since they are getting great results with our product).

We showed a tweet from an influencer earlier, it just so happened she had been using the Free version of our product. A great way to engage with these users is to give them something 🙂

Twitter / X has recently started placing increased focus on images. They will now show in your followers timeline so you should start taking advantage of increased visibility.

We’ve seen some brands using these for coupons (including printable ones), sale announcements, new product releases & high quality images of models.

The conversation below between Tesco Mobile in the UK & a number of other brands went viral as they all started bouncing off one another. Don’t be afraid to converse with other brands & turn it into an advantage.

Here’s another conversation between Oreo & Old Spice where they exchange Christmas presents.

If you’re at a conference often they have hastags, this is a great way to get exposure to people with similar interested & drive new followers. Ask questions, tweet interesting materal & just ask people to follow you 🙂

If you’re actually presenting at conferences then putting your Twitter handle on the start & end slides is a great way to get exposure to hundreds of people. Again, don’t be afraid to ask them to follow you.

I’ve seen some presenters that will giveaway prizes to users that follow them during a presentation. Don’t be afraid to mix it up a bit.

You would be surprised how many people view your about pages, use this as an opportunity to drive more followers on X. I’ve found that personal profiles work much better here.

If someone posts something good about your business or about one of your products, retweet it, favourite it. This not only helps turn that user into a brand advocate but it also acts as positive reinforcement for any existing followers about your brand.

No-one likes to hear a constant barrage of negative tweets, whilst we all like to vent on X from time to time you should try to keep it positive rather than negative.

This is equally as true when responding to any negative tweets or feedback that are directed at you by other users or customers.

Twitter / X is about engaging with users, don’t be afraid to follow the users that actually follow you. Don’t forget that they will get a nice email message when you do 🙂

We started creating a list of social media people in Australia.

This works even better if you can build a list of groups that already exist, then get the users to promote the list.

You’d be surprised how well this can work, simply make it a action every day to find 3 new people that compliment your business. Then send them a Tweet.

You’ll reach 1,095 new people every year – not only might they follow you but it could open up some partnerships or exposure to their followers.

For example, we help users with visibility of their contests via Twitter / X. Which normally results in a Retweet.

This a huge way to get exposure to lots of existing fans (if those are the sorts of fans you want exposure from). Check out this retweet below from Justin Bieber after someone tweeted about his new album.

You’ll see lots of users try to jump on the trending hashtag bandwagon, it can be a valid strategy provided you can add value – otherwise you may end up annoying existing followers.

Here’s an example of a trending hashtag that we tweeted about, since it was pretty relevant for our business.

You can use Hashtags on multiple networks like Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest. So think about a multi-network approach where you get users to use it everywhere.

Users love to engage, asking a question is by far one of the best ways to get users to interact with you. Do it more.

Videos now have a promiment place inside the Twitter / X feed, users can play them without having to leave. Videos are a great way to drive much more interaction & Retweets.

If you run an online store then Twitter / X is a great platform to syndicate coupons out to your followers. We have quite a few merchants that combine the coupon codes alongside a contest to really amplify their reach.

If you have a product that a certain type of demographic want then reach out to those people to see if you can get exposure to their Twitter / X followers. Often they’ll do it in kind, some might have advertising rates – just make sure you ask 🙂

Promoted Tweets are an amazing way of getting traction and getting your first interactions while building up your organic presense.

Quite a few businesses break their Twitter / X staff out into a hierarchy, featuring the main company account with individual staff accounts. This helps improve exposure, plus also allows individual employees to build their own personal following (whilst still being attached to the company).

Goes without saying really, but this is the kind of stuff that people love to retweet – whether it be interesting facts, statistics or jokes. Try to liven up the Twitter / X feed of your followers instead of the usual boring articles or blog posts.

Keep your followers interested in your company, reward them regularly. Not only will this help bring new followers on board, but it will increase the interactivity you have & the engagement your profile carries.

Users get push notifications, desktop notification & emails when you favourite one of their tweets. If you can find the right type of user that fits your product then this type of marketing activity can be incredibly powerful.

The key to this technique is to have a really strong bio & message that hooks the user to find out more.

We’d love to hear in the comments about more successful ways you’ve grown your Twitter / X fanbase.