Many people will tell you that they don’t care about how many Twitter followers they have, and they definitely have a point. It’s more important to have quality people following you than a bunch of bots and fake accounts. However, when you’re starting out in the Twittersphere, it’s nice to amass at least a small following.

A recent article in Business Insider says the No. 1 secret to growing your Twitter following is network overlap. This means that when you see your friend follow a Twitter account, you’re likely to follow it, too. Additionally, the frequency of your tweets and the quality of them also matters.

On the other hand, being a Debbie Downer is likely to slow down the number of people that follow you. You’re allowed to complain, but try to keep it to a minimum.



The easiest way to get Twitter followers is to follow a lot of people, a big percentage of whom will follow you back. If you’re using this method and you find you can’t follow anymore people, it means you’ve hit a Twitter follow limit. Twitter has imposed this limit to improve site performance and reliability to help make Twitter “a nice place for everyone”—in other words, prevent fake accounts and spam.

There are other paid services such as Just Unfollow that enable you to follow and unfollow people, and copy the followers of your friends. The lowest cost membership is $9.99, and this enables you to follow and unfollow unlimited amounts of people for two Twitter accounts. A free membership imposes follow limits. This option is good if you want to unfollow a large number of people that don’t follow you back.

However, following a large amount of people at one time may hurt your reputation, according to PC Mag.

“Remember that other Twitterers can see not only how many people follow you, but how many you follow and who they are,” PC Mag’s Jilly Duffy writes. “Influential Twitter users (the kind you actually want to follow you) will often check who you follow before deciding to follow. If you’re loaded with junk, they might pass you up!” Ultimately, the best way to grow a quality Twitter following is to:

1. Follow high quality people that you are genuinely interested in. If you’re stumped, look at who your competition follows.

2. Add a picture to your profile and make sure your Twitter bio is complete (and witty).

3. Add a hyperlink to your profile to your website or LinkedIn profile. Add your location as well.

4. Tweet and interact with other Twitter members often. This isn’t Facebook, you’re allowed to post as often as you like (as long as it’s not spam).

5. Tweet about your niche 80 percent of the time and banter with your friends and network 20 percent of the time. This keeps your followers happy and also makes you look human.

Samantha Collier is the chief content manager at Shift Digital. She also writes the blog Social Media for Law Firms, where a version of this story first appeared.

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