Whether an established brand or a start-up – we all know how important it is to have a presence on Twitter. After making a Twitter account the bigger question that comes our way is- How should I now grow it to have more followers ? How should I harness the real value of Twitter by engaging real time with the audience that matter to my business?

Well, with competitors and content overflowing on social media channels, it can become a daunting task to standout and hack your Twitter growth.

Thus here are four key steps to kick start your brand building on Twitter-

1) Make your Twitter Profile compelling

• Twitter only allows limited chars for profile description and hence it is important that you write a to-the-point description of your product/service and hashtag the relevant words. Hashtags in description increases your chance of being found by more people during their search.
• While it is always a good idea to have your company logo as the profile picture, however ensure that it is cropped in a way that its easily distinguishable and easy to relate to in the twitter feed. A good example would be the @NYTimes handle.
• For cover photos, always ensure that the image is not stretched or pixelated and is of a good quality. They are a good medium to communicate your upcoming events or product launches. This image was used by @MicrosoftAsia during their Surface Pro 3 Launch in the APAC markets, using #DoMore to tweet about the product.

2) Follow and Engage with relevant Stakeholders

Social media sharing and following is a two way street and if you want relevant people to follow you then you will have to follow them first!

• Follow : Its a good practice to make a list of 200-300 thought leaders, organizations and partners etc who would be good to have in your network and then follow them all from your company handle. This will allow you to listen to their conversations and what they are tweeting about. Further it will give you more insight into whom are they following and can be valuable for you as well. This lays a good foundation to grow your network.
• Create filtered lists: I like this Create your Lists tool that Twitter provides but I feel it is highly underutilized. There will be a stage when you are following 1000+ or 10,000+ people/organizations from your account and listening to all of them together can get very difficult. Here is where you can add them to different lists and at any time can select that list to see tweets of the members belonging to it. This comes handy when e.g. you are running a press conference and want to know real time what the journalists are tweeting about you or you just launched a product and want to know what the experts/thought leaders are saying about it.

• Now that you are already following them and know what they are talking about, engage with them by retweeting and commenting on their tweets, or by answering their questions, giving recommendations or simply include them in your relevant posts. Tag them when you are posting owned content that will be of interest to them. For example, if you are an Internet Of Things technology provider and are talking about your new launch of sports wearable, tagging your associated partners and ambassadors will help boost your post.

3) Content Management

Rich, fresh, interesting and insightful content is always appreciated and picked up fast.

• Use Tools to manage posts : I personally like Buffer to schedule posts for future days and at the same time manage analytics as well. It is important to post everyday regularly to show that you are active and up beat with the industry trends. As you will scale, tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and Tweetdeck come very handy to organize your content and response management.
• Content Frequency& Shared:Owned Content Ratio : When you have just started your handle, post out 3-4 times every day. Majority of the times in the case of start-ups and new businesses, the volume of owned content is relatively low. In that case, the ratio of Shared: Owned content can be 80:20. It is always good to share content from other credible sources and tag them where ever possible. It not only helps to build a relationship with the content source itself but also bolsters engagement. That said, brands should still steer towards having more of owned content and less of shared. As you progress, the ideal ratio of posting Shared:Owned content can be 40:60.
• Number of Hashtags: Never ever tweet without a hashtag! You will see for yourself that using hashtags tracts more shares and engagement. Hashtags make platforms like Twitter and Instagram much more effective and hence I strongly advise to use them to the fullest. In order to make full sense of the 140 chars of your tweet, always use minimum of 2 hashtags and maximum of 4. Neither under utilize nor overdo.

4) Analyze and Set Milestones – Lastly always set goals for your twitter account growth. Realistic and optimistic goals like getting 100 qualitative followers after a month of starting your account is a good way to gauge what you are doing correct and where you need to improve in terms of content, posting schedules etc. Here is where social media analytic tools like SimplyMeasured and SproutSocial are very helpful.

I hope the above will help in kick starting your twitter account and unleashing its full capacity. If you would like to share your experience or add any comments, suggestions or questions please write below or contact me on LinkedIn or Twitter @A_Kanika91.