How I Gained 1300 Writer Followers In 2 Weeks On Twitter

One thing I’m learning in this writing journey of mine is just how important self-promotion is. When it comes to writing, it’s awesome to have a larger following.

As writers, we need people to see our blogs and articles. The more people you have seeing your work, the more readers you pick up. Here on Medium, the number of reads per article is EVERYTHING.

Having any given blog blow up big can pay you hundreds or even thousands of dollars just from one article. I’ve had this happen once so far and I’m excited to do everything I can to help make that happen again. I know it will.

My biggest blog article has earned me over $525 in almost two months, all on its own. My 2nd place blog isn’t anywhere near that. However, the reigning champ blog is still plugging away while racking up reads and income daily.

If you don’t have a really large social media presence, it can be more difficult to quickly build a large following for your writing. You’re sort of starting from scratch if you have small social media numbers.

I’ve had the benefit of what many would consider a large social media following. I started using Myspace back in 2006 to add as many local people to my page. I figured that the more contacts I had locally, the more likely I could sell homes to a few of them.

My daughter was about a year old when I signed up on Myspace. The most adorable baby you’ve ever seen. Posting cute pics of her was fun and people seemed to enjoy it. But I needed more content.

Inspirational quotes were big at the time. I started posting a lot of positivity quotes. I looked up a lot of quotes and reposted ones I liked. Yet again, it did well. I got additional attention and more followers.

I even had a lady reach out and told me I helped save her life, as she was seriously close to suicide, and stumbled upon one of my quotes that gave her hope and inspiration. That made me cry. I kept at it and hoped for the best for her.

At some point, I decided that humor was going to be my main go-to. I’d always been a funny kid growing up. I could make anyone laugh, tended to be the class-clown, and could even get attention from girls by being funny.

Surely this could work on social media, right? The world is a tough place. A good silly laugh here and there would certainly draw attention, add followers to my page, and help people feel happy when they were down. Win-win, I figured.

Sure enough, my instincts in those early days of social media proved correct. I built a following on Myspace of almost 19,000 mainly local people. I developed a reputation for being one of the funniest pages out there. Their words, not mine.

It was fun. I did sell homes from people I met there. I dated some people that came from Myspace and later Facebook. My very worst and very best relationships in my life came from social media. I hurt, I learned, I loved.

When I stress the importance of building a solid social media following, I truly mean it. That’s where this Twitter thing I mentioned earlier comes into play.

I’ve had Twitter since 2009. I only used it a handful of times in 13 years, until two weeks ago. I just never got into it the way I did with Myspace and then Facebook after that.

After logging back on for the first time in years, I realized I had around 275 followers. Wow. 13 years with a Twitter and that’s what I had to show for it. I knew I could do better.

I started following people, mainly writers and authors that had larger followings. I targeted those who had between 10,000 to 100,000 followers. That’s when I figured out something interesting.

I noticed that there was an option where I could add up to 10 recommended people related to the authors I followed, with a single push of the button. So push I did. I pushed until I couldn’t push anymore. No exaggerating, that actually happened.

That was the next thing I learned about Twitter. You could only follow so many people a day. 400, to be exact. I searched online for the answer to that one. Once 24 hours passed, I was able to follow more writers.

My own numbers were picking up. I had jumped from about 275 followers at the start of this project to about double that in a couple of days. Being that I was following mainly writers, many of them would follow me back.

This seemed to be mainly the writers who had anywhere from about 5,000 to 20,000 followers. I’d get a few people to follow back who had between 40,000 to 80,000 followers, but not nearly as many as 5–20k.

At 982 followers, I tweeted to my people about how it would be cool if some of the 4000 people I followed who hadn’t followed me back yet, would. I got exactly 10 follow-backs overnight. Not too many people gave a damn.

Undeterred, I tried a similar post again. Perhaps I worded it differently, maybe the right bigger accounts got a hold of it and retweeted it, but this time it was different. I jumped from 992 followers to my current number of 1575.

I couldn’t believe it! I hit about 250 new followers in 24 hours! And if that wasn’t enough, 300 or so the next 24 hours. That single tweet received 217 likes and 33 retweets. Never underestimate the power of networking on social media.

Then something else unexpected happened. This time, it wasn’t wonderful. I couldn’t follow more people. I had followed 5000 people and Twitter sets a limit once you hit that figure.

I again read up about it and learned that once you followed 5000 people, they’d make it so you couldn’t follow more until you gained more followers yourself. There seems to be a ratio of sorts and I was truly disappointed to not be able to continue building my followers.

After pouting about it for a bit, I decided to take action. I spent a large chunk of two days unfollowing anyone who hadn’t followed me back so far. This was time-consuming, but the end result was worthwhile. I now have, as of this morning, 1592 followers while following 1526 people.

That’s a lot better than having 990 and following 5000 and not being able to follow more due to the max limit and poor ratio. While I don’t plan to repeat adding writers again all over the place and jumping back up to the max 5000 I’m able to follow, this method I used got me off to a great start.

I have a base of writers now that seem awesome and helpful. I can tweet a call to action to help each other out by offering a follow if they follow first. I started this blog late last night and 7 hours later, I woke up to 17 more followers.

I can pick and choose who to follow from all the writers and publishers I see in my Twitter travels. Now it’s easier to manage who follows back and who I’d like to unfollow if they don’t return the favor. It won’t be a two-day project to delete 3500 of 5000 like I had to do the first go around.

More than anything, it’s wonderful to network with other writers. It’s nice to see my blog numbers increasing on Medium by posting my daily blogs on Twitter.

I post them on Facebook as well, but the algorithm doesn’t seem to do well on my personal page with 4600 friends or my writer’s page on there. It’s hard to get a viral post on Facebook.

So I will stick with Twitter. Other writers seem to support other writers. Retweets are far more common on there than shares on Facebook. I also post a lot of funny tweets and memes to keep my followers interested. I haven’t forgotten my methods that worked on Facebook for many years.

The chances for writing pieces to go viral now seem more likely. That leads to more reads and more income. Having my blogs read by more people and getting retweeted for additional exposure is truly a blessing.

Follow this game plan and you’ll see your social media presence grow. Let’s support each other on Twitter and network with other writers. Here’s my link, please follow me @jasonprovencio and I’ll gladly follow you back. We can retweet each others’ work and help our writer’s community grow. &:^)