How to Grow from 0 to 20,000 Engaged Twitter followers in 8 months.

Hey guys, I'm gonna tell you exactly what I did to gain 20,000+ followers in 8 months.

Let's start with the stats:

By using this method you're about to learn, I gained 13,000 followers in the first 7 months. In the last THREE WEEKS, I gained 7,000 followers. That's over 300 followers a day.

Powerful stuff.

In the last 30 days, while growing from 13-20k followers, Twitter has given us 7,914 visits. About 500 of which have turned into subscribers.

These are high quality followers, too. I received 127 Twitter mentions in the past week; the average Klout user receives 7. I received 2,374 retweets in the past month; the average Klout user gets 10.

Granted, a big reason for this is because I send out a shit ton of tweets every day but still... Sound like something you're interested in?

Let me introduce you to Tweepi

Tweepi is an amazing tool that let's you easily follow a huge number of followers and unfollow them if they don't follow you back.

Now, this is a grey hat strategy. Twitter officially says aggressive following and unfollowing otherwise known as "churning," is against the rules. Perpetrators are given 30 day suspensions without warning.

But they're quite vague on what exactly is breaking the rules.

My guess is the more value you're providing your followers, the more leeway Twitter gives you. I've never been suspended.

So, what do you have to do?

1. Make an account on Tweepi. You need to get the premium version if you want to be able to unfollow people after a certain amount of days.

I recommend going platinum for $15/month because you can view twice as many users per page, increasing your efficiency as well as showing you when you followed/unfollowed someone last.

This helps you not keep following and unfollowing the same people over and over again.

Okay, you got an account. Now what?

2. Find Tweeps (Twitter peeps) that are in the same niche and tweet similar stuff to you. Preferably people with a lot of followers, like 10k+. Make a list. I use Twitter's lists.

3. Go to Tweepi and click: Follow Tweep > @user's followers. Type in the Twitter username and you'll see every one of their followers.

4. Sort by Last Tweet. This allows you to see who's active on Twitter. If they're not tweeting, they're probably not using Twitter.

5. Start following. You can click, then click again while holding shift to select everyone in between.

Who you decide to follow is a judgement call. What I do is I follow anyone who's last tweet was less than 14 days ago who has over 100 followers or their last tweet was less than 7 days ago with over 20 followers.

If people have a ton of followers, like over 10k+ I look over at their username. A lot of times you can tell by their username that they'll have no relevance to what you tweet about. Skip them. Don't be wowed by the big numbers.

I also don't follow anyone with an egg picture (meaning they haven't taken the time to change their default picture).

The reason for this is quality over quantity. If time is more important to you, you can just follow everyone who's tweeted in the last x days. And not worry about skipping low quality leads.

6. Go to: Dashboard > Premium Unfollow Tools > Unfollow users who I followed more than x days ago, that haven't followed me back.

Figure out how long you wait before unfollowing people is another judgment call. The less time you wait, the quicker your Twitter account will grow, but the more likely you'll get whacked with a 30 day suspension for churning.

I've always waited 5 days and have never got suspended. Your mileage may vary.

Unfollowing is 10x faster than following. It should take you hardly any time at all.

7. Go to: Dashboard > Premium Unfollow Tools > Unfollow users who haven't tweeted in 30 days.

Every once in awhile, unfollow people who aren't tweeting. If they're not tweeting, what's the point in following them? This will allow more room for people who may engage you or retweet you.

How long does this take?

In the beginning, you'll spend about 20 minutes a day on this. It may take you a longer when you first start to get your head around it and develop that muscle memory down.

It'll start to take longer the more and more followers you get. Because I've reached the point where I can follow 1,000 people every day, it takes me around 25-45 minutes.

Unfortunately, you can't schedule this. You have to do it EVERY DAY or you miss out.

Rules of Twitter

As previously mentioned, you can only follow up to 1,000 people a day.

You can also only follow up to 2,000 people until you have 2,000 people following you. After that, you have to do a little math to figure out how many people you can follow...

(Your twitter followers) x 1.1 = (How many people you can follow)

So if you have 10,000 followers, you can follow 11,000 people.

The less Twitter followers you have, the slower your rate of growth will be. Once you get to around the 12/13k range, you'll start to be able to follow 1,000 people every day and your follower count will skyrocket.

Twitter also doesn't like to see you only tweeting links. So tweet about stuff that gives immediate value to people.

For example, I have an ESL blog. So one of the tweets I send out would be "GRAMMAR—Fill in the blank (use in, on, or at) — My birthday is [ ] September. (answer in 15 min)."

This not only gives people immediate value (they don't need to "trust" you to click), but it engages them as well.

Morals?

One of the reasons this is kinda grey hat is because it's spammy. If people don't follow you back, you unfollow them.

But it's not really a big deal. You would just not want people to know that's how you're gaining your followers.

But this is just about FREE advertising, if you're not doing it, you're totally missing out.

Once you grow enough, you'll have the ability to give 1,000 people EVERY DAY the opportunity to see what you're all about and possibly buy from you.

If you use Tweepi every day, you get to advertise to 30,000 people a month for $15 and 15-20 hours of work. Not bad.

More tips

• Make sure you avatar is a picture of YOU, not a corporate icon. People like to see they're interacting with humans.
  
• Make sure your bio tells people succinctly WHY they should follow you.
  
• Tweet A LOT. Of course you should never compromise quality for quantity, but the more active you are, the more organic followers you'll get. Some people will unfollow you because you tweet so much, but **** them.

Be someone worth following

Of course this tactic won't work if your tweets suck.

But if you tweet high quality stuff and do this every day your bound to be successful, bound to be successful.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you have any other tips to add. Cheers!