Just like radio and television, Twitter is a communication channel that enables you to broadcast your brand message and gain online exposure. By creating invaluable content, you can bolster your brand presence as readers are more likely to consume and share content that they find intriguing and useful. Particularly, consumers are more likely to distribute content that can help them establish credibility and nurture relationships with their peers. After all, consumers only care about their self-interests and developing rapports with their peers. And if your content can help them accomplish these goals, it’s more likely that it’ll get shared.

By retweeting relevant news timely from renowned content websites such as Mashable and TheNextWeb, you can keep your followers up-to-date with the latest technology or marketing news. This in turn can help you induce your followers to share your tweet as they most likely want to share the latest information with their peers to showcase their credibility and knowledge. This can help you broaden your Twitter reach as you’ll be able to connect with more prospects through your followers’ retweets. 

According to TheNextWeb, spelling out “retweet” can help you increase shareability by 12 to 23x times. The American Red Cross has used this tactic for their #PerfectGift campaign and achieved their fundraising goal effortlessly. Although we’ve attempted this approach but didn’t see the same result, we believe this is still a great marketing tactic as it allows companies to cut through their clutter in the Twittersphere and proactively encourage their followers to share their content. That said, if you don’t see the positive outcome you’ve hoped for after 10 tries, you may want to abandon this approach as you don’t want to irritate your followers.

Marketers are no strangers to contests and you can definitely use this approach to boost your Twitter followership. By running Twitter-only contests, you can induce your followers to share your contests specifically to their Twitter friends. This in turn will help you increase your Twitter reach, brand awareness, and most importantly, your followership. You can for instance grant your Twitter followers a greater chance to win the contest if they share the contest information on their Twitter page. This will help you gain more qualified followers easily as you’ll be able to reach consumers who are likely to fit under your target market through your existing followers.

Just like you, other companies or marketers are using Twitter to disseminate their brand message and content largely and economically. You can leverage this by commenting on their tweets to nurture a positive relationship as other businesses and marketers also enjoy interactions from other Twitter users. This in turn can help you induce these companies and marketing professionals to follow you back on Twitter as they most likely also want to develop a rapport with you in the future.