The one thing I really should be doing to grow my social media presence

Someone asked me the other day how I’ve managed to grow my Twitter account to more than 1,000 followers.

I’m well aware that 1,000 followers won’t land me in the Twitter hall of fame, but it was clearly enough to impress this person and quite honestly, I’m very happy that I’ve attracted this kind of a crowd. I very nearly shared the list of steps I’ve taken that have worked for me:

1. I have a professional picture and a brief bio
2. I post content I find online that I think will be helpful to others (always using shortened links)
3. I create my own original content through my blog which I share on Twitter
4. I thank people who mention or retweet me (I’m nothing if not polite) and respond to DMs that seem to come from real people who aren’t trying to sell me something
5. I follow a lot of people who work in my industry and others who seem to have similar interests, and many of these people follow me in return

There’s nothing wrong with the above list and if you’re struggling to add followers, I’d highly recommend each step. The problem with this list however and the reason I didn’t feel comfortable even pretending to be a social media expert is that I’m missing something.

And the something I’m missing is big - really big.

Social media is about engaging with other people to share ideas and find ways to help each other.

Engagement takes many forms on Twitter:

1. Having real conversations with people
2. Actively looking for opportunities to retweet and comment on other people’s posts
3. Helping people with no expectation of anything in return
4. Connecting your followers to each other when you think they would benefit
5. Acting as a mentor
6. Answering questions, offering advice, being helpful
7. Taking an interest in people for who they are, not their business or what they tweet

The sad fact is that I’ve done very little engaging and I’m not sure how helpful I’ve been to the 1,000 people who follow me. I’ve had brief spurts where I’ve attempted to start conversations with strangers and actively looked for opportunities to share and promote and interact with my followers, but I get discouraged easily when it seems the world hasn’t noticed. I get busy and forget that I need to put in a consistent effort to build relationships, to give more than I take.

The keys to success on Twitter (and any other social media platform) are to be yourself, be real, be helpful and be consistent - relationships will follow.

I’m really glad that I have 1,000 followers, but once I put in the effort to really engage people, I know my entire Twitter experience is going to change.

That one thing is going to make all the difference.