Why Twitter for Your Business & How to Get Your First 1,000 Followers FAST

ByHelmi Hasan

I’ve tried promoting this blog on most popular social media platforms, and surprise, surprise, Twitter is hands down, my personal favorite out of the bunch.

Why? Because, unlike Facebook, Twitter’s organic reach makes it an attractive platform to personal brand yourself and promote your business for FREE.

But if you’re starting out on Twitter, you’ll most likely face these problems:

  • Not many followers, no matter what you do
  • Your tweets doesn’t reach many people and have low engagements
  • No sales and minimal traffic back to your website

So how exactly do you grow your followers on Twitter?

Worry not, I tried a bunch of stuff on Twitter and looked at my analytics. Then, I reverse engineered what worked.

So in this article, you’ll save massive time learning how to craft tweets that will reach a lot of people and get high engagements.

Let’s get started:

Why Twitter is Great for Promoting Yourself?

Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash

I’ve tried TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest & LinkedIn to promote myself as an authority in the personal finance niche.

Each has its pros & cons.

But in the next section, I’ll list down all the benefits of Twitter that is too good for an online marketer to ignore:

Twitter’s Massive Free Organic Reach

You can reach far more people on Twitter if you tweet about the right topic, at the right time, with the right emotional triggers.

Take a look at how many people I reached on Twitter vs. Instagram in the last 30 days for almost the same effort:

My tweets reached 162k people
My Instagram content only reached 3412 people 🙁

With this proof, what would you rather do?

  • Create instagram content to reach 3,000 people a month, or
  • Write a bunch of tweets and reach out to 162k people a month?

I’m not saying that other social media platforms are not worth it, but if you can only focus on only one platform and are a little witty with words, I’d say Twitter is a great way to market your business.

Let’s move on to the next reason why Twitter is great:

Twitter’s Audience is More Open Minded

The nature of Twitter where people can tweet about whatever comes to mind makes it a great place to discuss topics that you would otherwise get roasted on other social media platforms.

Like when I tweeted to young Malaysians to forget about investing in under-construction properties:

That tweet reached almost 60,000 people and had 4,000 engagements!

Plus, I didn’t receive any hate comments for that tweet. That shows how open-minded the community is, or I just got lucky 

What Topics do Well on Twitter?

If you don’t know what to tweet about, these are fail-proof topics that will surely get high engagements on Twitter:

  • Money & personal finance
  • Business tips & motivation
  • Self-improvements (i.e., developing good habits)

Now that you know what topic to talk about, let’s see examples of my tweets that did well:

How to Create a Successful Tweet:

Forget about going viral. Consider getting viral a nice bonus, but not your main objective. Here are the metrics you should look for and why:

  • Impressions: How many people were reached & saw your tweet
  • Engagements: How many people interacted with your tweet. Aim higher than 5%
  • Retweet (RT): How many people ‘shared’ your tweet so it can reach newer audiences
  • Quote Retweet: Similar to RT, but a QT can give you an opportunity to start a conversation

Here are all of my tweets that I think did pretty good (for a Twitter beginner):

TacticReachEngagement %RTQTProfile ClicksTweet
Common pain points + local language118,01811.9%678381,123Link
List + emojis25,2634.5%633164Link
Benefiting the public23,1167.7%138133Link
Show some stats15,7975.4%601637Link
Mentioning popular brands/people12,98717%16224Link
Personal struggles + question6,4163.6%5151Link
Ask a relatable question3,04511.7%0010Link
Balkoni Hijau’s top performing tweets – Sept 2021

Here are my key findings of what makes a successful tweet based on the small followings that I have:

  • In Malaysia, talking about common pain points in the local language will reach many people
  • The deeper the pain, the better the attention. A topic that I see doing well: Discussing salary
  • Make the tweet about the audience and not about yourself
  • People like stats, lists, and before and after photos
  • More impressions, more people checking out your profile & following you

Let’s take a look at each of my top-performing tweets and see why they work:

The Pain Point of the Masses

MetricsStats
Impressions/Reach118,018
Engagement Rate11.9%
Profile Clicks1,123

Why It Works: 

  • It’s talking about a pain point faced by many Malaysians; low wages. 
  • Plus, it’s in the Malay language, which is the majority language spoken in Malaysia.

What Could Be Improved: 

  • My spelling & proofreading could be better. 
  • I’d avoid ‘lol’ in the future.

Here’s another example of a common paint point quote retweet:

MetricsStats
Impressions/Reach16,173
Engagement Rate3.4%
Profile Clicks61

Why It Works: 

  • A more influential person has picked a winning topic. All I had to do was to add my spin and add more value to the reader.  
  • This tweet works because I talked about the low Malaysian salary & I provided a solution or hope for the reader.

What Could Be Improved: 

  • I think this tweet did pretty well, but it’s a little wordy. I can further trim down the text without losing the message.

Ask a Relatable Question

MetricsStats
Impressions/Reach3,045
Engagement Rate11.7%
Profile Clicks0

Why It Works:

  • People like tech gadgets and the robot vacuum is a hot item right now.
  • Repurposing my Instagram story video is smart.
  • Asking a question is great for engagements.

What Could Be Improved:

  • The text could be shorter & proofread my tweets
  • I could list down more gadgets

Personal Struggles

This particular tweet didn’t do that well, but it’s an example of what a personal struggle tweet looks like:

MetricsStats
Impressions/Reach6,416
Engagement Rate3.6%
Profile Clicks51

Why It Works: 

  • Many content creators are struggling with burnout, but no one is talking about it 
  • Asking a relatable question will make you seem more human and approachable
  • Asking a question invites people to a conversation, which leads to a high engagement

What Could Be Improved: 

  • Less text in a paragraph

Announcement Benefiting the Public

MetricsStats
Impressions/Reach23,116
Engagement Rate7.7%
Profile Clicks33

Why It Works: 

  • A nice bold headline that sticks out. 
  • Saying that I interviewed a friend makes it sound valuable & people are curious about the results.

What Could Be Improved: 

  • Fewer blobs of text. 
  • I need to angle this topic more relatable to the masses.

Stats

MetricsStats
Impressions/Reach15,797
Engagement Rate5.4%
Profile Clicks37

Why It Works: 

  • The cost of living is a hot topic. 
  • People are curious about the survey results.
  • People generally like stats. 
  • The features image is eye-catching in my opinion.

What Could Be Improved: 

  • The lead-in text to ask people to click on my link could be more persuasive
  • The copy seems a little anti-climatic. Can further put salt in wound to really get those emotions going.

Lists

MetricsStats
Impressions/Reach25,263
Engagement Rate4.5%
Profile Clicks164

Why It Works: 

  • People want to invest their money
  • People like lists 
  • The emojis are eye-catching to the targeted audience: Young people starting their investing journey
  •  The featured image is attractive & unique, in my opinion

What Could Be Improved: 

  • I don’t need to mention [New Blog Post]. It does not add value to the reader. 
  • The hook at the beginning needs to be more persuasive.

For example: Do you want to start investing, but it’s so confusing & don’t know where to start?

MetricsStats
Impressions/Reach12,987
Engagement Rate17%
Profile Clicks24

Why It Works: 

  • Piggyback riding from someone who’s famous get’s your tweet shown to a lot of people. This tweet got 13k impressions. 
  • People like the photos to show proof of what I’m talking about.

What Could Be Improved: 

  • I forgot to tag @chenom! Such a rookie mistake!
  • The English could tailor for more Malaysians

What Do I Plan to Do Next?

Writing this blog post helps me see what’s working and what isn’t. 

Now knowing what I do, here’s my plan to further scale my Twitter followers in the future:

  • I need to tweet more, a LOT more
  • I’ll try more tweets in the local language
  • I can repurpose my old blog content as new tweet material
  • I need to batch content & automate my tweets
  • I need to use shorter sentences, improve my spelling & grammar

Although I only have around 1,600 followers on Twitter, I think this blog post will be beneficial for people & businesses who have just started their Twitter profile and want to shortcut their success.

I hope this blog post has been helpful. Please share this with your friends online, and leave a comment below to give me any feedback 🙂

Solo Creator

I jumped into digital content marketing to boost my Airbnb business and was instantly captivated by the limitless possibilities for creativity and self-expression. Now, I'm on a mission to chronicle my journey as a solo creator, sharing my personal finance expertise and balancing it all as a new parent.

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