I’m not by nature a particularly jealous person, but seeing other people get loads and loads of Twitter followers I can’t help but be a little envious. It’s human nature – we all want to be more popular or more successful than we are. That said, I am also rather introverted and this makes growing my followers a lot harder than it could be. So what I want to do is increase my Twitter followers without seeming like I am promoting myself.
I’ve experimented with all sorts of methods for increasing my Twitter follower count, and when I did what I am going to explain below I wasn’t expecting any sort of success but it really worked, and is so simple. It all boils down to one very simple thing.
The Problem?
Most people on Twitter link their profiles to the homepage of their website, but that doesn’t give a good idea of who you are or what you talk about. Twitter is a social medium and so the jump from personal account to faceless website can be quite jarring.
The solution? A Twitter landing page.
A Twitter landing page is a stand alone page on your website written specifically for Twitter users. It welcomes the user to your site, and tells them the type of things you talk about on Twitter. It keeps things personal, whilst selling the positives behind following you. You should treat it as if you’re selling a product (yourself) and upsell the benefits you will bring to the potential follower.
My Twitter Statistics showing how my followers - notice the jump around August the 2nd. This is when I added the landing page
Anatomy of a Twitter Landing Page
When I was creating my Twitter landing page I searched for a tutorials on the subject and found a series of opinion pieces on the best things to do. I then distilled this down to the structure I have listed below.
- Pick a nice clean url – http://yourWebsite.com/twitter/ is ideal.
- Start with a short description of who you are and what you do (I did 2/3 sentences)
- Add some proof of your knowledge and skills – I listed some of the more well known projects I have been involved with over the years.
- Explain what you talk about on Twitter (1 paragraph is plenty)
- Show some examples of writing that is relevant to your chosen subject. This is mostly for bloggers, not everyone will need it, but I wanted to show some of my top posts to show that I’m not all hot air
- Link to your Twitter account liberally. There needs to be some nice strong text saying ‘follow me’. Calls to action can work wonders 🙂
Remember to keep everything relevant to you, and what you do. Like any sales page it’s all about benefits. You need to show how people will benefit by following your Twitter account.
Don’t forget to change your Twitter profile to link to your Twitter landing page instead of your blog homepage
300%?
As you can see in the graph above there was a spike on around August the 2nd where the followers jumped from 1 – 2 a day, up to 4 – 5 a day. In numbers this isn’t a huge jump, but the consistency shows that it definitely changed positively and if I did more to sell myself I am sure it would have climbed even more. Note that this change involved simply adding a new page to my website.
10 Minutes?
Yep – super quick. The whole process between idea and execution took no longer than 10 minutes. I could probably spend some more time on the landing page, making it look more attractive, and adding bigger calls to action, but in terms of getting something done, there’s nothing better than ‘just doing it’ and then seeing if it works. I can’t bear to spend loads of time on a project to see it fail, so 10 minutes was plenty of time for a proof of concept. Since it has worked so well I can now spend more time tweaking and improving it.
Was it good/ useful/ a load of old rubbish? Let me know on Mastodon, or BlueSky (or Twitter X if you must).
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