Getting My First 500 Twitter Followers, and the Value of Organic Growth

I confess: I only have 498 Twitter followers at the writing of this blog. However, the number isn't the most important part of my social media marketing strategy. To me, the quality of the people behind the number is what matters most, especially as I grow my modest business into something larger.

Twitter remained a mystery to me for quite a while. It wasn't until about eight months ago that I decided to start using Twitter in earnest. What, I thought, is the "thing" with Twitter? I know plenty of people who use it, but what do they use it for, and how? It only took a few months for me to really get the hang of it, and I've learned some valuable lessons along the way!

Scheduling Tweets
Tweets have a life cycle of about eighteen minutes. What's the solution to staying as visible on Twitter as you can? Post more often! Of course, I'm not even going to pretend I can post every twenty minutes, nor can I come up with the quality of content needed to do so. But, with the use of my awesome Buffer app, I schedule up to ten Tweets per day for free, and it gives me suggestions about what to post. This makes Buffer a perfect solution for me-I get the quality of content I desire from sources I trust, I can Tweet at both high-traffic times as well as when my target target audience is online, and I still have the flexibility to be able to retweet the people I follow without feeling like I'm clogging the news feed.

Using Lists
I just started using lists, and it's been quite a timesaver. If I want to check in with what some of my favorite social media marketers are doing, I go to my Marketing list. Or I can always zone out for a few moments with my list of Arts and Photography. All in all, I no longer have to sift through the entire list of people I follow, I can find what I need quickly. This is a great resource when I'm gathering content to share, as well.

My Twitter List of Bloggers-I'm still building my lists from the people I follow, but as I follow more people, it's easy to keep everyone organized.

Blocking Other Users
When I have followers who are just glorified advertisers for other shops or people who keep offering to sell me 20,000 followers for $5, I block them. I want to have followers who are engaged with my content, and the spammers don't qualify.

Organic Growth
I tend to only follow people I find really interesting, and I hope the people who follow me feel the same way. You can purchase followers on almost any social media site, but, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not on Twitter for number of followers, I use Twitter as my professional community. When I started following people and building my followers, I stayed away from the crossover of my Facebook social community and focused primarily on people who use social media marketing daily, as well as professional bloggers and designers. Now, in addition to Buffer, I have an entire online community whose content I can share and learn from, and they share my content and learn from what I do, as well.
While some people may think it looks great to have a certain number of followers, I am happy to have grown my list in a slower way-with people who are engaged in the Twitter community and who have a similar professional focus to mine.

All told, Twitter has become a valuable tool for my business in that it has helped me to find some of the true experts in my field, and I've been able to expand my knowledge base and sell myself better because of it. Are you on Twitter? What has your experience been with using it? Share your story in the comments below!