You can tap into Twitter’s hashtag ecosystem to build a larger audience for your tweets. There are many intriguing conversations happening throughout Twitter. People use hashtags to label their ideas so that other people can add to the discussion.
You can use hashtags to find like-minded people on the platform, to achieve larger reach with your tweets, and much more. This guide will show you exactly which tactics to use so you can grow your number of followers on Twitter.
The Hashtag Economy
When you look at your Twitter feed, you’ll see what may look like a random assortment of content. Chronology influences, but does not dictate, the flow of tweets in this feed. Tweets appear near the top of the feed when they are deemed to be relevant to your interests.
There’s more to Twitter than the content feed. Direct messages and lists are two examples of features that you won’t see from the main page, but that can help you connect with more people on the platform.
Hashtags are a hugely important feature that is easy to overlook. You can click on any hashtag and you will see a list of other tweets that used the tag. It’s a targeted list of interested people for any topic of conversation that you can think of.
Useful Research Tactics
The first step towards building your Twitter account is to identify great hashtags where your target demographic hangs out. That demographic is usually people in your industry who have similar interests as you.
You can search a bunch of different hashtags to see which ones are the most active. Make a list of the tags that get between 5 and fifty tweets per hour. That is a good range of activity where you will have people to engage with, but it won’t move too fast to keep up with.
Not every hashtag will pan out. Some of them may end up having a different culture or theme than you first thought. Others just won’t result in a lot of engagement. Try to have at least a dozen of them on your list before moving on to the next steps.
Using Hashtags to Get Followers
You should use the hashtags from your list in your tweets whenever they are relevant. Keep the list in a text file on your desktop and/or phone so you always have a way to reference it.
Being present on these hashtags will give your ideas more exposure to your target demographic. It’s the most immediate way that you can gain extra awareness in your chosen categories. Keep using the same hashtags repeatedly for at least a few weeks and see how it goes.
In addition to starting your own conversations, respond to other people’s tweets. Join into other discussions that you see within your chosen hashtags. It is standard to talk to people you don’t know on Twitter, so don’t feel awkward about doing this.
You’ll make new friends on Twitter by participating in new conversations. This drives more engagement on your tweets and makes you more likely to show up in the top of the content feed for other users.
Finding New Hashtags
Don’t let your list of hashtags get stale. Social media culture moves quickly and the best tags for this week may not be relevant next week. Keep moving and update your list at least once every two weeks.
Eliminate all the hashtags that are not performing well. If any of them have fallen outside of the desirable range of tweets per hour, get rid of them. For every hashtag that you get rid of, replace it with another one that seems better.
You can expect to have to replace at least a few hashtags with each month. This is natural. It’s also normal to attempt new hashtags that end up being ineffective. Don’t worry about this. Do your best to learn from your mistakes but also accept that social media marketing is somewhat unpredictable no matter how good you are.
Get More Followers
If you follow a good hashtag strategy for at least a month, you should see your number of followers go up. This is the natural result of participating in the social ecosystem of Twitter and meeting new people.
Measure your results and make sure that you are making progress. Don’t become comfortable with your tactics until you have proof that they are working. Follow the steps from this guide and you can build a bigger audience on Twitter.
After reading this article, you may also want to find out how to grow your professional network using Twitter too.
