As a social media consultant, I help entrepreneurs and businesses unlock the power of social media marketing.

With over eight years experience spanning across both B2B and B2C industries, I’m passionate about everything involving social media — especially Twitter.

Twitter is exceptionally exciting to me because it’s a fantastic tool for building a brand and brand influence. It’s easy to find and take part in conversations, stay on top of news (stories usually break on Twitter before anywhere else), find content, connect with people, and actually be social on social media.

Additionally, it’s a fast-paced network, which allows you to continuously drive traffic and share information without the content fatigue you find on other social media networks.

Here, let’s explore the nine strategies I’ve used to help myself, and my clients, build brand influence on the platform.

9 Effective Strategies to Build Brand Influence on Twitter

1. Optimize your profile.

The first thing you can do to start building brand influence on Twitter is to fill in your biography, choose a profile image, and create a header image for your profile.

Building influence begins with the basics of your profile because that’s what your potential followers will look at (aside from your content) to decide if they want to follow you. Your profile will also help you come up in searches, so it’s important to have it be optimized for your success.

Be sure to make your profile more searchable by using keywords in your biography and use the link in your bio to promote specific posts or landing pages.

Twitter gives you one link space and you can always sneak one more link into your bio, so use these to your advantage! When you have a new product, blog post, or landing page to promote, pop your link in your bio with a call-to-action. If you have folks clicking around your profile, this can be a great way to generate a little more traffic.

2. Tweet consistently.

Tweeting and showing up consistently is essential in building a following on Twitter. Ultimately, social media marketing is a commitment. Post consistently to stay in front of your audience’s eyes and keep growth going.

Try starting at three tweets per day and go up from there. There are so many subjects you can tweet about, including quotes or industry statistics, quick tips related to your industry, or new blog posts you’ve published.

Here are a few additional ideas to get you started:

• Ask questions
• Run Twitter Polls (with the built-in Twitter Polls tool)
• Tweet a series of blog posts as a list
• Use GIFS
• Try Live Videos
• Use Twitter Moments to recap an event or compile a few tweets around tips or tools
• Use Twitter Events in the analytics dashboard to know what events are coming up that may be relevant for your brand to tweet about

Remember that not all your tweets need to be original. Include shares from other sources and retweet others, as well. I love using the “Retweet with comment” feature to add my own ideas to a re-tweet.

Lastly, it’s important to note — there are so many ways to tweet with 280 characters. You can create multi-link posts like lists or mini round-ups, have fun with emojis, and much more.

Twitter really lets you get creative with how you tweet.

3. Engage with others.

The most effective way to build a following on Twitter (and on every social network) is to engage with others.

There are many opportunities for engagement on Twitter — for instance, you might consider joining a Twitter chat, looking up and following event hashtags, or keeping an eye out for trending topics related to your brand.

Interact with other’s tweets by liking, retweeting and responding to posts.

4. Pin posts to your profile.

Pinning posts to the top of your profile is an effective strategy for getting more eyes on your content.

You can create a newsletter sign-up, a tweet linking to your new blog post, or any piece of content that could be compelling to your Twitter followers. Pinned tweets remain at the top of your profile until you take them down. Try pinning tweets to your latest download, newsletter, or company website.

5. Participate in Twitter chats.

Participating in Twitter chats is an effective strategy that helps you engage with your target audience and build brand influence on Twitter.

There are Twitter chats for just about everything (and if there isn’t one in your niche, why not try starting one?). Get to know your audience, and figure out which chats they might be hanging out in, then go ahead and participate in the chat.

Don’t sell or push your links using the chat hashtag, however, since that can come across as insincere. Instead, actually take the time to be part of the conversation and focus on adding value.

6. Use Twitter lists.

Twitter lists are used for grouping Twitter users. They are a simple way to “curate your own timelines”, cutting through general timeline chatter. Twitter lists can help you organize the people you follow, and are a great tool to build your Twitter following and social media relationships, as well.

You can create private or public Twitter lists based on whatever topic you want, add people or brands (even ones that you don’t follow), and look at only the tweets from users you have added to your list. You also have the ability to subscribe to other users’ lists, and others can subscribe to yours.

Besides helping you keep you up-to-date with tweets from your favorite accounts, there are many benefits for growing your following, building relationships, and creating more value for your followers.

Here are a few Twitter list methods to build your following:

• Curate lists by topic: Create lists of employees, event attendees, etc. They will get a notification that they’ve been added to your list, which informs them of your brand while making them feel special. You can add someone to your list without actually following them, which is ideal if you’re concerned with your following-to-follower ratio.
• Never miss a tweet: Because Twitter lists only show you the tweets from the members you’ve added to it, it’s easier to find content in your feed that you care about, making it easier to share high-quality and relevant content with your network.
• Create resource lists: Have a favorite brand-related blog, or influencers you admire? Resource lists can help you provide your followers with more value, while also enabling you to capture the attention of influencers if you include them in your list.
• Thank you lists: Yet another way to engage with customers — if someone mentions you, checks into your restaurant or event, or shares your content, you can add them to a list and let them know you appreciate them.

Each Twitter list has a unique link — which gives you some versatility when it comes to sharing the list with others. Again, lists are all about adding value.

7. Use visuals.

Visual content is important on Twitter. Be sure your images are sized correctly and create a signature look and feel for your account. This is great for engagement and attracting eyes to your posts in a cluttered feed.

Additionally, decide how you want your account to come across visually. This means choosing the right colors, specific filters, and giving photos a consistent look.

8. Use relevant hashtags.

Hashtags are such a major part of Twitter — in fact, they were even invented on this network.

Hashtags are used for searching, which means an opportunity to get in front of new eyes. When you choose hashtags for your next post, think about how people are searching for your content topic.

You’ll also want to consider how saturated a hashtag might be — targeting is the name of the game. The Twitter rule of thumb is to use no more than two hashtags per tweet, so using them strategically for growth is essential.

9. Leverage videos and live videos.

Videos have such amazing reach on social media, and the same goes for Twitter. Link your YouTube videos and create shorter videos specifically for Twitter.

I also suggest sharing Twitter videos in the same way you’d share Instagram Stories — go behind the scenes, share different parts of your day, etc.

10. Analyze your account.

My last tip, and one I feel is incredibly critical to your success on Twitter, is staying on top of your Twitter analytics. Keep track of followers, engagement rates, retweets, and more with Twitter’s very own analytics dashboards.

Keeping up with your analytics will help you build your audience by repeating what’s working and getting rid of what isn’t.

Twitter offers deep analytics via analytics.twitter.com. The Twitter analytics home page gives you a nice overall snapshot of your account, including your top tweets, mentions, tweet impressions, and profile visits in one-month increments.

The dashboard also lets you know if activity is up or down for a 28 day period. You can click on “view tweet activity” to dive further into analytics for individual tweets.

Make it a habit to check your analytics on a regular basis to see what days you garnered the most impressions and what you tweeted, so you can repeat the magic.

Ultimately, there is really no “hack” to building influence and growing your followers on Twitter.

Using a combination of the things we covered in this post, you will see growth and increased engagement on your Twitter account. My goal for 2020 is to leverage Twitter Videos more often — so I’ll hopefully be seeing more of you by going live from my Twitter account, as well.