How to Get Influential Twitter Follows – 7 Effective Strategies That Work

Get Influential Twitter Follows

Sometimes you feel like a celebrity yourself seeing the big guys in the industry follow your stuff. I've even had times when I screen grabbed those special follows to show my friends.

So how did I come about getting influential Twitter follows?

About 3 years ago, I started my 'poor' twitter profile because almost all my friends were talking about it in school. I wasn't getting followed because truth is I wasn't even trying to.

After about 2 years, I ended up with around 50-100 twitter follows 🙁

Fast forward to a year later, I've grown my brand's twitter page to about 5,000. Out of those 4,534, 2,100 have 10,000+ twitter followers. Also, 197 are verified twitter profiles.

(Wondering how I got my profile's analysis? Keep reading and I'll show you how)

I've written down all the strategies that have helped me get this awesome degree of following and I'll be sharing everything in today's guide. These are strategies that I've used countless times and have worked well. They're tested and trusted.

So without wasting much time, let's get into how to gain influential Twitter follows:

The whole process is divided into 2 main steps. The first is having a great profile that attracts the right kind of following you are looking for (influential).

Some of these tactics will be yielding results real fast. Some might take a little time but will surely work. So I'll be laying down each and every step for you so you don't face difficulties while implementing how to gain influential Twitter follows.

They're as simple as;

Make your twitter page super professional.
Attract your target (influencers).

Your Profile's Look - The First Step to Get Influential Twitter Follows

I once read a quote from a blog that said something like "have a clean place before inviting your date for dinner".

How does this correlate?

What this means is that you need to prepare your profile before inviting influential users. Influencers would never (or hardly) follow a spammy profile. Besides, no real person would love that either.

So the way you present yourself really matters on twitter. If you have a spammy brand then expect spammy or fake profiles to follow you and vice versa.

Now how do you go about creating a twitter profile that attracts the right following?

Like I always tell my twitter clients, you can have a complete profile but still look spammy and unprofessional. It doesn't matter whether you've done everything twitter says you should have which are things like;

A complete and professional profile is one with;

A good profile picture that looks human. Or a clear logo image.
A good wall image that grabs users' attention (in a positive way).
A good bio that includes personality, about you, what you stand for, how you can help and social proof.
A legit domain link.

So how do you get the 'perfect' Twitter bio?

Start with a clear, headshot image as your profile picture

A professionally designed wall image: If you're like me and you're bad at designing then don't force yourself to it. You can get a super professional wall image on fiverr for $5-$10. Your wall image will stand in as your "pictorial bio". Users should be able to tell what you're about by mere staring at your wall image. This can include your website link, your image, logo, your brand's purpose and social proof but the baseline is that it must be of high quality and equally professional.

A sweet & nice bio: if I'm left to decide then your twitter bio is the number 1 thing people look at before hitting the follow button. This tells who you're and what you're about. A normal twitter user looking to follow a couple twitter brands about blogging would go through your bio to know if you'll provide what he/she wants. Talking of influencers, they'll strictly go through your brand's profile before hitting the follow button. From your bio, to your profile picture, your wall image then scroll through your tweets. They carefully do this to make sure they only follow those who deserve them. Be crafty but simple when writing your bio. It should include what you do (e.g blogger, CEO), what you've achieved (e.g published 126 ebooks), and social proof (e.g where your bylines/quotes have appeared).

Influencers aren't robots, they do follow users.

Influencers like Lisa Sicard, Rebekah Radice, Sam Hurley, Jeff Bullas, Ryan Biddulph, Samantha Kelly and many more still follow people. In fact, they follow users with far lesser influence than themselves so what do you think triggers them to hit the follow button?

"It's simply how you present yourself."

Present yourself professionally, you get influential follows; present yourself spammy; you get spammy follows.

Present yourself professionally, you get influential follows; present yourself spammy; you get spammy follows. Click To Tweet

Step #2: Attracting Your Target Influencers.

At this stage, you should have gotten your profile 100% ready to start receiving follows from celebrities or influential people in your industry. And I'll be revealing some of the best ways you can attract influencers to visit your profile then if it's good enough they'll hit the follow button.

How to Attract Influencers and Celebrities to Your Twitter Page

#1: Tweet an honest Testimonial about their stuff.

I still remember the first time I used this tactic. It didn't only get the influencer to follow me but also got a retweet which brought in 17 new follows in a matter of hours.

I first came across this tactic from Bryan Harris of videofruit.com. In one of his emails, he explained how he scored a feature on one of the biggest brands just by giving a testimonial via twitter.

So how do you go about it?

After listing them out, head over to twitter and tweet out a 100% honest review or testimonial about their stuffs for each one of them.

Here's a secret tip that works super well for influential Twitter follows;

Find their most recent project and tweet about it. For example if they've been blogging for years and they recently started a new podcast few months ago, tweet about their podcast.

This is effective because they'll love to get an honest review of what they're currently working on and will do everything they can to make it grow.

Find your influencers most recent project and tweet about it. - #Twittertip Click To Tweet

#2: Find Their Most Recent Guest Appearance; Tweet and Commend it.

Here's the thing about influencers and interviews/guest appearances;

If they agree to appear on a website, blog post, video or any form of interview/feature it means the host is also huge (most likely bigger) because influencers will mostly agree to do an interview that'll provide ROI which are mostly with bigger brands.

For example most (if not every) experts would always agree to an interview on huge publications like forbes.com, HuffPost, Entrepreneur etc than on any other blog.

So how do you leverage this to get them to you?

Also simple. All you need to do is find your influencers' recent interviews. You can do this by using these Google searches;

"Influencers Full Name + Interview" "Influencers Full Name + Guest Appearance"

Because these interviews are on huge publications, they'll value them hence will always want it to be perfect.

Send a quick but sweet tweet about the Influencer's guest appearance and what you gained from it.

" Wow! Really awesome interview with @LisaPatb on how she grew her blog during the early stages. Loved how she talked about her story and what she did when she started 🙂 Check it out here - (INSERT LINK) via @theblogprofits @siimonsander"

Send a quick but sweet tweet about the Influencer's guest appearance & what you gained by it. #Twittertip Click To Tweet

#3: Ask an Honest Question About their Product/Service.

Here's the thing;

The goal behind all of these isn't to end the conversation after you get your first reply so be sure to craft amazing conversations that'll grab the influencers mind and make them like you.

For example, I use Evernote for my notes and have a query regarding the premium version that I'd like to be clear about. What you'll do is get on twitter and send something like this;

"Heyo, guys! @Evernote. Just want to be clear about the X version of Evernote. Would I get X when I purchase it? I'm a big fan of Evernote & use it for all my writings. Amazing app you've got 💪 @plibin"

Phil Libin will most likely answer your question personally and say thanks. This is a strategy I actually used on Phil and it worked.

#4: Tweet their Recent Blog Articles.

So why their most recent post?

Because that's the only way to show you follow their stuffs. That's the only way they'll know you're subscribed to their email list, notifications etc. Being among the first people to tweet the Influencer's post separates you from every other person that tweets later.

So how do you go about this for influential Twitter follows?

What I did (and still do) is I used a IFTTT recipe that alerts me whenever certain influencers/bloggers publish a new post on their blogs. Here's how to do this:

Step #1: Head over to ifttt.com and login to your account.

Step #2: Click on 'New Applet' and set your "if this" to "RSS Feed". Copy and paste the Influencer's website's feed link.

Step #3: On your "then that" section, add your gmail account to receive an email whenever there's a new post on the feed link you entered.

This way, you'll be able to stay updated about all things that get published first (even before the influencer emails his/her email list).

#5: Find their Friends and Start Up Meaningful Conversations (Use Twitonomy).

This tactic is like 'word of mouth'. You reach your target influencer by going through their friends. So how do you know who their friends are?

I use a tool called twitonomy to find out who my target influencer engages with the most on twitter. Here's how to do this;

Step #1: Head over to twitonomy.com and sign in with your twitter account.

Then Step #2: Plug in your target influencer's twitter handle in the search box and hit enter.

Final Step #3: Scroll down to "users most replied to".

Start up meaningful conversations with them because these are users your target influencer constantly engages with, they'll have a couple interactions that you can jump into.

Use twitter's advanced search to find all tweets that both handles are in (your target influencer and one of his/her friends). For example I'd like to find all conversations between Samantha Kelly (@tweetinggoddess) & Jeff Sheeshan (@jeffsheeshan) here's the quickest way;

It'll be like "this person knows my friends and interacts with them, we can connect too ".

#6: Reply to their Most Recent Tweets.

Go through about 5-10 influencers' twitter profile each day and reply to their most recent non-promotional tweet. These are tweets that don't promote anything (links, products, services etc). Here's an example;

Haha, thanks Simon! We're WAY more excited about donuts than cake.

- Ben Sailer (@Ben_CoSchedule) May 24, 2017

Do not force the conversation. Make it flow and sound natural. Make this part of your twitter routine/strategy and start building long term relationships with the big guys.

#7: Quote Your Thought Leaders/Experts.

Influencers absolutely love it when you quote their words which is why this is a strong part of my twitter strategy. It's also one of the most simplest but rewarding tactic to get influential Twitter follows.

Make a list of your top influencers and find the best thing they've ever said or written (based on you). Schedule these quotes to be periodically sent out using buffer and don't forget to tag the influencers.

#Twitter Automation Tools: 62 Experts Share Their Secrets: https://t.co/ld38sjibgC via @S_Zakuu pic.twitter.com/8rzNrXexAH

- Dan Gingiss (@dgingiss) November 19, 2017

Influencers absolutely love it when you quote their words - #Twittertip Click To Tweet

The results?

Conclusion: Start Tracking Results of Influential Twitter Follows.

After you've implemented a couple strategies to get influencers to follow you, here's how to know whether you're getting results from influential Twitter follows:

Use socialrank to track the quality and number of verified followers you have. Here's how to do this:

Visit socialrank.com and sign up for a free account.

Wait for socialrank to quickly go through your account. This should take about 5-10 minutes. You'll receive an email when your account has been completely crawled.

Set a filter to show how many verified users follow you.

You can also set a filter to show you how many users with 'X number' of followers are following you. For instance, how many users with 10k+ users follow me?