“Help me increase my Twitter engagement” is a cry for help that can excite many amateur social media consultants. In the wrong hands, this intention can lead to sketchy and expensive solutions, including creating bogus accounts and paying a ton of money to artificially and inconsistently boost your presence.

The truth is, the power to increase your Twitter engagement rate has been in your hands all along. There are several simple yet effective methods to organically gain more followers, more Retweets and more click-throughs to your site, and they don’t have to cost you any more than some extra time or some of your staff’s time.

You might not hit the million follower mark in a month, or be in Lady Gaga/Pope Francis superstar range right away, but you can still see steady and honest growth from lolyal fans who like what you have to say.

Try these modern methods to learn how to increase Twitter engagement:

Content

When you post or how you post are important. But what’s most vital is what you post. The best way to get followers and increase your twitter engagement is to offer frequent and interesting Tweets that people can comment on, Retweet, or ‘favorite.’

Twitter itself encourages this focus in its Business/Solutions section with step-by-step suggestions to leverage your Tweets. The seven-stage method includes picking your tools, designing your content, defining your audience and budget, and keeping track of what works and what doesn’t.

A related Twitter blog post shared that, after studying common factors of 2 million Tweets created over a month, common elements in successful Twitter engagement campaigns include tweets that contain photos, hashtags, links, and videos. Tweets that contain at least one digit also seem to perform better than ones without a number.

Make it a conversation

Social media has enough people expressing opinions regularly, and with Twitter, it’s especially easy to simply churn out random thoughts, or worse, information about your business. The random thoughts aren’t a bad idea, as long as they’re interesting. If an employee is especially witty in under 140 characters, give them this task. Frequent business plugs are also discouraged –Twitter has been compared to a cocktail party, where it’s OK to occasionally mention who you are and what you do, but not talk about yourself all the time.

Instead, you need to engage others so they’ll return the favor. Answer people’s questions in public. Join a discussion under a certain hashtag. Go to a Tweetup in your community (or start one). Once people start knowing that you have interesting things to say – and interesting Tweets they can Retweet, (especially if they don’t have to come up with them themselves), the loyalty will grow. Klout, a social media influence site, suggests “paying it forward” by giving public credit to sources if you discuss a topic.

Make it easy

By creating interesting content and sharing it, you’re doing a favor to people who can’t think of anything to say – they can simply retweet yours and hopefully give you credit. But Entrepreneur says you can do a lot more to encourage your audience, and thereby increase your twitter engagement. This can include making shorter Tweets — if you use all 140 characters, it’s hard for someone to add their own thoughts when they ReTweet yours. It can also include using services like bit.ly or tinyurl to shorten links – there’s no need to take up character space with a lengthy url. You also can simply occasionally ask for a Retweet once in awhile and hope people oblige. Another way to make sure your content catches people’s eyes, besides making a lot of it, is to repost the same post a couple of times a day. Someone may miss your morning Tweet but appreciate that it comes back around in the afternoon. Or, repeat a late-night post occasionally for night owls/early birds/international followers.

The social media landscape is continuously evolving, and a Twitter engagement method that may have worked three years ago may not be as effective. Likewise, there are some great tools available to assist you. Ready to learn more? Contact our team of digital marketing aficionados today to start tweeting in the most effective manner!