You launch a new website.

No subscribers, fans or followers.

But you want to get people checking out what you’ve worked so hard on to show off. Where to start?

Enter Twitter!

Why Twitter? In my opinion, building a small ‘base’ following is the first thing you need to do to get people onto your website and talking.

There are a number of ways to do this, but Twitter is one of the easiest and requires the least amount of time.

All it takes is 10 minutes a day  for about a month.

By using that 10 minutes a day for a month you can expect to get at least 1000 Twitter followers that you can tweet your content out to and engage, in order to grow your following and get people talking about your website. That’s not a bad start considering that the average Twitter user only has 61 followers! (source)

I’ll show you the exact process I used to build my first 1000 followers in the 2 videos below.  But before I even get started, there’s one thing you need to do, especially if you’re a beginner…

Spruce up your Profile

Before you do anything your profile must appear to ‘alive’.

Why would anyone want to follow you if all they saw was a bland empty slate when your name pops up. They aren’t going to think “Wow! Nothing… super interesting, I’ll have to follow this tweep!”

Nope.

They’ll look at your empty profile for less than a second and keep moving. So below there’s a video and written instructions to make people see  life in your profile and get them interested in what you have to say. Then you’ll get those followers!

(The video above explains the process written below)

Obviously you should go to Twitter.com and sign up if you haven’t already. They’ll get you to follow a bunch of people before you get started (psst, look for @creatorimpact while you’re doing that and follow me!).

After that, click on the little cog symbol on the top right of your browser, a drop down will appear so then click on ‘settings’. Once there, you’ll notice a panel on the left with a few options.  Start by clicking on ‘Profile’.

Once there….

• Add a profile image.
  A business logo is good, but if you’re a blogger or individual put up a picture of yourself.  It adds personality and a level of trust.  When people see your face, they identify you as a real person and not just a fake profile or bot.
• Upload a Header.
  Find or create an image roughly 1500 x 500px in resolution (it doesn’t have to be exact) and upload it as your header.  You can use text on these headers to help describe who you are (like I have) or simply insert an image which fits what you’re all about. Keep it relevant, clean and professional – matching your website branding.
• Add your Name, Location & Website
  People want to know who you are and where you’re form, so that’s a no brainer. The biggest no brainer is your website – if you’re trying to drive traffic to your site – you better put your address in the ‘website’ field so people know where to go!
• Finally, you must fill out your Bio.
  A profile without a Bio looks empty, has no personality and will get significantly less followers than one with a bio.  Describe quickly what you, your website or Twitter account is all about. If you’re a personal trainer, put down a solution like “I show people how to get fit and ripped” – offer a benefit.Not convinced?  Here’s some numbers for you from Hubspot: “Users with a bio have over 8 times more followers on average than users without a bio and users with a link have over 7.5 times as many as users without.”

This is all pretty basic stuff, but you’d be surprised how much people overlook it.

The next step is to click on the ‘Design‘ button on the left panel.

Once there, choose a pre-made theme or customize your own.  Honestly, I always prefer to be unique and customize my own to match my website and branding.  This is pretty simple:

• Upload a Background Image.  This is optional, but it’s a good opportunity to further enhance your profile by adding a little more branding and add some uniqueness to your Twitter profile.
• Change your design colors. Once again, keep the colors relevant to your branding and have a play until you like what you see! Dead Easy.

Your profile now has your personality and brand woven into it.  Double check how it looks on your phone or tablet (if you have access) and once you’re happy you can simply forget about it until the next time you want to update your image. But it doesn’t stop there.

Tweet!

So someone has found you on Twitter, they decide to investigate after reading your Bio and feeling interested but then – no tweets.

Why follow this profile if nothing is ever said on it? 

You have to put up a few tweets!  You can introduce yourself first off, but try to put a link to your website and a few handy or entertaining tips.

People are looking at your profile to see what you can offer them, so give them something they’ll like and they’ll follow.

Try for 5 or 6 tweets to give your profile a little life!

Now we’re ready, let’s find some followers!

This is one simple process, but there are countless ways out there to grow your Twitter following. In the beginning, this is an incredibly easy way to grow your ‘base following’.

This base following will be the people you interact with, people who retweet your links (because you retweet theirs!) and engage you and start talking.

Word of mouth is incredibly powerful!

These people won’t be the most targeted out there – people who seek you out will be.  But no one is going to be doing that because you and your Twitter profile are relatively unknown.

Let’s change that. Head to Tweepi.com…

(The video above explains the process written below)

The basic idea behind this strategy is nothing new.  As a matter of fact it’s the most used and unexciting concept out there – but it works.

When you follow people on Twitter – a lot of the time people will follow back. The key is to find people who are

• Likely to follow back
• Active and Tweeting Regularly
• Who are interested in your niche.

Tweepi makes this easy.

Just go to Tweepi.com and sign up under a Free plan. Once logged in (and having given authorization through Twitter) you’ll notice a few areas.  The one to look at first is “Follow Followers“.  scroll down and click on that button.

You want to find the user name of someone who runs a twitter account talking about similar things to you.  I talk a lot about building websites in WordPress, so I’ll use WordPress as an example since people following @wordpress, will more than likely be interesting the kind of things I’ll be talking about. Then click ‘Start Following‘.

Now we have a list of people interested in what we talk about. Next, how active are they? You’ll notice a column called ‘Last Tweet‘ it tells us the last time they’ve posted anything on Twitter.  So if you make sure you only follow people with a ‘last tweet’ of less than 4 or 5 days, you can feel safe they have been active recently. But what about the likelihood of following back?

That’s Easy!

Above the table, click the button ‘columns’ and you’ll get a drop down – simply tick the box next to ‘Follow Ratio‘. I then sort by ‘follow ratio’ by clicking the head of the column.

The way Follow Ratio works is if someone has a ratio of 10%, then they have 1 follower for every 10 people they follow. This also means that a ratio of 1000% means a person has 10 followers to each 1 person they follow.

So we want to follow people who have a ratio close to 100%.

This means that they have an equal follow to follower amount.  If they have 100 followers, then they’ve followed roughly 100 people.  The chances of them following us back is high since their profile reflects behavior similar to what we’re after.

However, I tend to follow people between 30% and 120% (or 80% to 110% if I’m being really picky).  This loosens up the focus a bit and seems to work about the same. People with low follow ratios may also follow back because they are generally trying to build a following of their own.

Simply go through, follow people who have:

• Follow ratio’s of 30% – 120%
• Have Tweeted within the last 4 or 5 days
• Follow anywhere from 30 to 50 people a day (this is safe and won’t alarm Twitter of ‘mass following’)

You’ll find your Twitter following growing every day!

It’s very important that you keep tweeting quality messages and links so that you audience is getting something out of this and that you appear to alive and worth the follow. If you’re profile looks old and outdated people won’t follow you – current fans may even unfollow you.  So keep things moving!

But what about those who don’t follow back?

You need to Unfollow those people once every now and then!

Of course you want to give those you follow some time, so I recommend giving people 4 or 5 days to follow back. All you need to do (in Tweepi) scroll up and head back to your dashboard.

Once there, you’ll see and option with a button that says ‘Flush’, it’s the first one.  Click on ‘Flush’ and you’ll be given a list of the people you’re following who aren’t following you back.

Generally the first page contains the newest follows, so head to the last page and unfollow 30 or so people – assuming you’ve given them the 4 or 5 days to follow back.

If necessary you can do this once a day or even once or twice a week.  It’s a great way to stop yourself from hitting the Twitter Limit of 2000 – you’ll need more than 2000 followers to follow more than 2000 people.

Rinse & Repeat!

If you keep following targeted people and cleaning up those who don’t follow back – you’ll get to that 1000 Twitter followers pretty easily. It takes 10 minutes a day and you can go to 1000 or beyond if you want! It’s pretty easy.

Make sure you engage and offer quality. You can’t expect to flood people with links and boring self promotion and expect people to keep following you or paying attention to your tweets. Each person you follow is exactly that – an actual person.  Give them a reason to follow you can you’ll get that audience raving and spreading the word in no time!

If you found this useful, look me up on Twitter!  My ID is @creatorimpact so say Hi!  Otherwise It’d make my day if you subscribed to my Email newsletter just below this article.

Once again, thanks for reading my ramblings!