So you’ve hit your stride with your blog, and you’ve finally managed to get your social media buttons to display correctly in your sidebar. You’re promoting your posts on Twitter and yet your follower count is mostly stagnant. Why is this happening? And what is so great about Twitter anyway? More importantly how can you do gain more Twitter followers organically, rather than buying them from an gmail account in India?

It might be a minefield for the uninitiated, but Twitter is pretty awesome for building your personal brand, and is possibly the least invasive way of building connections with PRs, fellow bloggers and brands alike. It’s taken 5 long years, but I’m pretty sure I’ve finally tamed the beast, so here are my top tips to get the very best out of Twitter:

Step 1 - Pretty up that profile

It can be tricky trying to stand out with a limited number of characters, but it’s so very important. Who are you? What are you trying to achieve? What are your interests? If you’re parent blogger, how old are your children? Try to imagine the things a brand / others might want to know about you, and make sure you hit those key points. Don’t shy away from showing a sense of humour too - you’re competing in an oversubscribed market so do what you can to make others sit up and notice.

I can’t stress how important is it that you include your location too. This is something so often overlooked but essential for anyone who might want to work with you. Handily you don’t need to waste valuable bio space for this, as Twitter allows you to input this elsewhere in your profile.

Avatars and images should also be selected carefully. For added personalisation and continuity across your social media channels, consider using one avatar across all platforms, as with your header image.

Step 2: Follow likeminded people

Whatever your niche, you’ll find a whole host of people who share your passion. Finding them is stupendously simple on Twitter. Not only does Twitter handily point out people for you to follow, searching other people’s follower lists will also reveal a goldmine of new accounts.

Step 3: Incentivise them to follow you back using Twitter Lists

And now for the clever bit… when following accounts, manage them by dropping them into Twitter lists. As a blogger, I have dozens of lists; PR contacts, fellow bloggers, news breakers, baby & toddler brands… Getting this right early, will make it far easier in the long-term to manage your account.

Name lists clearly, keep them public, and don’t overlook the power of a description. For example, if you have a list for local restaurants you would love to review, state whereabouts you are and that you intend to check them out. This enables them to quickly identify that you are their target audience, and is more likely to earn you a follow back.

Not only does this make the viewing experience easier (providing you with a shortcut to see the sort of tweets you want to see) as mentioned above, it also incentivises people to follow you back. It shows that person that you’ve invested time in reading their tweets, and that you share a common interest.

One hour spent following approximately 100 accounts, tends to result in 40% of those people following you back within 24 hours.

Step 4: ENGAGE: Join Twitter Chats, both formal & informal

You’ll find dozens of structured Twitter chats taking place at set times throughout the week. Many of these will have a dedicated hashtag that participants are encouraged to use (check out #PBloggers #BloggerationChat #LBloggers). Getting involved in these group chats will enable likeminded people to find you and vice versa. Even if you miss a chat, trawling through commonly used chat hashtags will yield plenty more people for you to follow.

Yet don’t simply rely on chats to get your voice out there. Try to click on your home feed at least 4 times a day and get involved in the conversation. Don’t be afraid to butt into exchanges, favourite & retweet other people’s content, and reply to comments or questions others have asked (even if they don’t currently follow you). If you spot someone asking for recommendations on baby monitors, maybe link through to one you have reviewed. The key to being successful on Twitter is engagement, so engage, engage, engage.

Step 5: Use (but don’t abuse) Hashtags

When promoting a post, keep hashtags succinct and relevant with a catchy title. 2-3 hashtags is more than enough to hit your target audience without appearing spam-like, whilst still leaving enough characters to make your title engaging and add an image.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on what is trending. You may have some content that lends itself to the theme, or simply have something to say. Getting involved in topical discussion allows you to reach even more people and amplify your voice. If your engagement stats are lagging, this is an ideal time to bump them up.

Naturally, post promotion is essential, but it’s worth being aware of tweet etiquette too. Hashtags such as #BloggersWanted or #PRRequest are being increasingly used for self-promotion, drowning out relevant content and making it less discoverable for others - this won’t win you any admirers so be selective.

Step 6: Pinned Tweets

Simply clicking on the ellipsis icon at the base of your tweet, allows you to pin it to the top of your feed. This is useful for promoting a specific post, competition or your blog in general. The best pinned posts will sum up what your account is all about: perhaps a link through to your ‘About Me’ page with a call-to-action for those interested in working with you.

Step 7: Use images in your tweets

This is such a quick and simple way to make your posts more engaging, and your feed more aesthetically appealing to readers. Not only are these more likely to be clicked upon, they are also more likely to be RTed by others - exposing your content to a wider audience (whilst indirectly encouraging more followers).

Twitter is a multimedia platform. The best accounts will have a healthy mix of images, video and text. Think about the things you are posting on other platforms (be that Instagram, or Facebook), if it’ll translate through to Twitter, it should be on there. That said, try to avoid auto-tweeting by linking accounts to one another - you’ll often find these are formatted strangely and not very reader-friendly.

Step 8: To schedule or not to schedule?

Although scheduling tweets to promote archived posts seems like an easy win, it is regarded by some as bad practice. If you decide to go down this route, ensure your promoted posts are still relevant and interesting to readers. There’s nothing worse than promoting a Christmas post in June.

Yet schedulers are an incredibly useful and under-utilised resource. Applications such as Buffer allow people to schedule a few tweets at night or first thing in the morning, leaving you with the rest of the day to simply respond to mentions and engage in conversations. Buffer also has an optimal timing tool that shows you which times of the day are best for posting engagement-wise. These don’t have to be promoted posts either. Perhaps you have a burning question to ask, or you want to cross-promote content on another social media platform.

Step 9: Host a competition

Comps are an easy way to build your following. It’s always a good idea to regularly work with PRs and reward readers with competitions on your blog. Don’t wait for a PR to suggest a giveaway, explain to them the benefits of hosting one with you alongside a review. This will naturally increase engagement with both your review, and the brand themselves. Use applications such as Gleam or Rafflecopter to encourage entrants to follow you on Twitter, and tweet that they have entered.

If it’s an increased following on Twitter you’re after, it’s also worth considering a flash competition on Twitter. This is as simple as asking people to RT a pinned image and follow you. Just remember to promote your competition on sites such as Prizefinder to maximise engagement.

Twitter competitions can see you gaining anywhere between 100-1000 new followers depending on the desirability of the prize.

Step 10: Regularly clean your account with Crowdfire

I love Crowdfire for its one-click deleting of inactive & spam accounts. It’s also incredibly useful for identifying accounts that aren’t following you back. Don’t be tempted to simply unfollow those that haven’t returned the favour. Twitter is a fluid space so they might have simply not noticed you. Rather attempt to convert these into followers by making an effort to engage with them.

Of course you are not required to tacitly follow back every account that follows you, but Crowdfire will also enable you to find those accounts quickly and easily. Simply click on these profiles to see if they interest you, then make your decision from there.

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There you have it. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments, or hunt me down on Twitter.