How I Grew My Stagnant Twitter Following

 
In the first 6-9 months of blogging my twitter following exploded (on a relatively small scale compared to others, BUT STILL) and I was so pleased. I was hitting all my goals and targets and it was fabulous!

Once I hit 2,000 followers though it slowed sooooo much. All pace was lost. This is probably partly because I had my dissertation and final year exams so was not as active as usual. But almost definitely more than I should have been... Woops.

I decided to start a little experiment to see how much, if at all I could grow my twitter following in a month. And I was veerrry happy with the results! I gained 518 followers in four weeks which compared to what I was gaining in my previous slump was amazing for me.

I also saw an increase in page views and Bloglovin followers which was a nice surprise addition. The best part is I now speak to soooo many more people on twitter and have "met" some real new favourite people who I know will become my good friends. I didn't change anything else - I tweeted the same amount and I promoted my blog posts through the same amount of scheduled tweets. 

So here it is. The ground breaking tactic...

Daily twitter chats

Yep. It's that simple.

Well, almost daily. I didn't take part in chats on Saturdays and sometimes I got distracted and missed the beginning or end of chats. If I had plans I missed a few but generally I took part in a chat every day. I used this calendar but it is actually missing the #GRLPOWR chats which are on Tuesday 9pm, Thursday 8pm and Sunday 9pm.

The first week of chats I gained 117 new followers, and that was the easiest week of growth. Probably because it had been soooo long since taking part in chats AND I had never taken part in a #GRLPOWR chat (my new fave). The second week was a bit slower because I missed loads of chats (woops). The third and fourth weeks I gained 174 and 142 followers. The third week I was trying to hit a milestone so got a couple of looovely shoutouts from my beautiful followers which meant by follower count shot up more than it might otherwise have done.

It's important to make sure you speak to people other than those you regularly chat to. They're already your buddies, we're trying to make NEW friends. That's why it got harder towards the end of the month because it felt like I wasn't seeing anybody knew to talk to. Which is stupid because there undoubtedly was.

This hopefully goes without saying but you HAVE TO follow people too. This isn't a follow4follow and unfollowing everyone who doesn't follow you back or not following people if they don't follow you first thing. We're not 12. But follow people you're enjoying talking to and hopefully other people will be doing the same. 

But basically, to summarise: daily twitter chats is bloody hard but it works. Realistically, someone with an active social life just can't do chats every day. Especially because most of the chats are during the time I would usually have dinner. However, it definitely inspired me to join in with chats more often. I've picked a handful of favourites (#thegirlgang #grlpowr thursday chat and #lbloggers) that I'm going to try and take part in as often as I can.

If your following is lagging or a bit stagnant and you're finding it hard to grow, I 100% recommend joining in some twitter chats. Even if you don't gain a billion followers, at the very least you'll have an interesting conversation and may make one or two friends!

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