You can get 12,000 followers for your Twitter account for the low, low price of $5.
Plenty of websites offer such services:
No.
Just no.
You're better than that.
Don't buy thousands of fake accounts for cheap.
There's a much smarter way to buy legitimate Twitter followers and increase your organic reach.
Having real Twitter followers definitely will offer you more long-term benefits than any "cheap" deals you'll find.
What you have to do is buy real followers.
Adding legit Twitter followers will increase engagement and impressions because actual people will be retweeting you, replying to your posts, or otherwise interacting with your content.
Increasing your following does come at a cost, but it may surprise you to learn that, when done right, it really isn't all that expensive.
Here's your ultimate guide to running a Twitter Followers Campaign.
How to reach your future Twitter followers
Twitter makes it super easy to target users by location. For example, you could target people in specific cities, or you could target a metro area, such as Boston, MA–Manchester NH:
Your Followers Campaigns can target either by interests and followers, or by using Tailored Audiences.
Using interests and followers, you can target people who are similar to other Twitter accounts that you've specified. It's simple to find those Twitter IDs by searching for their name. You then can add interest targeting (e.g., users who are interested in advertising or business).
Remember, you aren't buying anyone's followers here. You're targeting ads at people who are like your specified user or users.
Tailored Audiences lets you include or exclude. Here, you can target people who have recently visited your website, or by using curated lists.
If there are certain influential people you want to follow you, people who follow another account in your industry, or emails your company has collected (from people who have signed up for your whitepapers, webinars, or other content), all you have to do is create a list of Twitter usernames or emails and upload it.
Because these people are in your industry and/or within your company's ecosystem (or have at least visited your site in the past), it's quite possible they know who you are. That makes them great prospects for your Followers Campaign. Take full advantage of the ridiculously powerful ability to target specific users with Twitter Ads.
The big secret to actually buying Twitter followers
Now you need to create your promoted tweet.
Twitter suggests this as a best practice: "Let the user know why they should follow you."
No. Twitter is wrong.
In my experience, people don't respond well to these types of messages.
People don't care why you think you're so great, or that you think you provide the best deals.
I tried, believe me. I promised users that if they followed me, they'd become a guru of AdWords.
Didn't work. At all.
You need to reject Twitter's advice.
So, what's the big secret? What actually does well? What inspires people to become a follower?
Be awesome and don't tell anyone to follow you.
The best way to make your Followers Campaign work is to share a unicorn piece of content — something that performed really well for you and was truly outstanding. Take that great piece of content, maybe an infographic or an amazing visual, and share it.
If what you tweet is truly is amazing, people will decide to follow you because you're cool.
Bonus tip: Consider adding emojis to your promoted tweet. Yes, emojis really do increase engagement.
What it costs to buy real Twitter followers
Now the big question: How much do you pay? How much does a Followers Campaign cost?
Twitter charges on a pay-per-follow basis for Followers Campaigns. That means you only pay when someone follows you.
You don't pay if someone clicks on your link and visits your website, goes to your profile page, retweets you, or engages with your promoted tweet in any other way.
Even though it isn't the intent, the clicks driven from these other forms of engagement also dramatically contribute to the value of your Followers Campaign.
Basically, a Followers Campaign is an auction. You identify the most you're willing to pay for every new follower you gain.
So, let's say I'm willing to pay $2 per follower. What happens is the estimated reach falls to 17,000 of the 181,000 in my targeted audience.
The more you're willing to pay, the more impression share you can grab. The less you're willing to pay, the fewer of your target audience you will reach.
The results
Even though you've told Twitter what you're willing to pay, it usually costs substantially less.
In the above example from earlier this year, I added 26 followers. The cost: $3.49, or $0.13 per follower.
I actually told Twitter I was willing to bid $0.50 per new follower. So why wasn't I charged that amount?
It turns out Twitter will give you a discount if people are more likely to follow you.
My ad produced a 0.22 percent follow rate. Seems low, right? Actually, that's pretty decent because the expected follow rate is 0.1 percent.
Translated to Twitter, this means having a higher follow rate actually gives you a discount on each click, whereas people who have worse follow rates from Follower Campaigns will pay far more.
But I got more than 26 followers for my $3.
My Followers Campaign generated 11,900 ad impressions. Also, 20 people clicked on my ad and visited my site.
All free. Again, you're only paying for followers, not any other engagements.
Not a bad deal.
Where your Followers Ads appear
Most of the time (roughly 70 percent), your ad will appear on the right near the "Who to Follow" suggestions box.
A smaller percentage of the time (roughly 30 percent), your ad will appear natively in users' timelines.
Buying real Twitter followers: 3 key takeaways
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1. Don't buy fake Twitter followers. Having huge follower numbers and low post engagement numbers looks ridiculous. Instead, consider buying real followers to increase your reach and engagement. The value of Twitter Followers Campaigns isn't limited to the new followers you're buying. You're only paying for followers, which means you can also drive a ton of free ad impressions, clicks, and retweets.
- 2. Real followers have real value. Amassing a large number of followers means Twitter will view you as an influencer. Once you reach that level, you can end up "stealing" a search result (e.g., a conference hashtag) because Twitter curates popular tweets and "pins" them at the top, which means you can potentially get millions of views from anyone searching for that hashtag.
- 3. Ignore Twitter's "best practice" advice. Don't give people a reason to follow. Try to create a high-engagement tweet. Give them a unicorn — share the rarest, greatest-performing tweet you've ever done as your Followers Campaign. This will drive down costs while maximizing the value of those free clicks.
TL;DR - IMHO buying followers is tricky tactics for targeting intermediate and experienced Twitter users.
Why? Because they are using Twitter few years and know how to find anyone and anything in Twitter. They know that if someone paying for "followers" mean one "we're join late in party and desperate need followers". I never, never ever follow someone who pay and show in "Who to follow" panel as "promoted".
How i personally decide who to follow:
Ok, list above can be continued but i think that i show most important factors are there.
So for me buying followers is for new and novice Twitter users. And they doesn't know yet how to use it so they can follow anyone just to fill their stream.
True key for getting more audience is when you interact with audience and influencers. And when you fill their streams with value.
I don't underestimate ads for followers, just it's tricky.
Yes I prefer real followers!!!!!!!
me too. i get a good laugh when i see someone with 250k followers getting maybe 0-3 retweets per post.
yeah... #smh
couple of thoughts here. (1) there are way more intermediate/beginner users on twitter. (2) in the post i describe a way to use follower campaigns to get much more value than just followers. for example, clicks to your website, retweets (etc.) are free, and that if you accumulate enough real followers, twitter will curate your tweets at the top of search results and in other places.
I know - and that's why i like this article. Don't misunderstand me that i don't like it - It's great.
This is like talks "organic vs. ppc" with all pros and cons. I have used FollowerWonk to analyses some local campaigns in Twitter here in Bulgaria and i'm disappointment with quality of new followers. IMHO around 30-50% of them are bots.
Agree. Automatims like IFTTT moves a lot of followback bots, and we need to understand this reallity, always there is a big percentage of bots, fakes and followbackers.
one way to (dramatically) reduce the amount of follow-back robots from Ads is to leverage remarketing as the ad targeting method, or custom lists of real twitter people that you want to follow you. it eliminates fake follow-backs in ads, because you're targeting real people on your list or real people who visited your site recently.
A big difference here is that you're very experienced with Twitter and are looking for very high value in your follows. I don't think that most people on Twitter are doing as much of an investigation into who they're following and are doing it more on the face value of their profile when they first visit it.
It's going to heavily depend on the niche and your target market too though.
I have an e-commerce store that sells licensed professional sports items, home goods and the like. Being able to target fans of specific teams is likely to be very beneficial for me and probably not all that hard to get conversions. Sports fans seem to follow anything related to their team to the point where following their account usually gets me a follow back at a very high rate.
Totally agree with you Peter, I would prefer organic over a paid one. The best way is to contribute in the industry with your blogs, podcasts, comments, and Twitter Chats. I have grown my followers from 40 to over 3,800 but it took me some time and hardwork and yes! its worth it.
Since we're talking about gaining Twitter followers, can I throw out a pet peeve and a recommendation to Mozzers?
Whenever I see someone follow me, and they have almost exactly the same, large number of followers and the same, large number of people they follow, I groan. If I see that someone's follower and following numbers are both, say, around 10,000 -- that tells me three things:
1. They don't really have an interest in who they follow -- no one can possibly keep track of 10,000 people in a Twitter feed.
2. They are merely following people and then unfollowing those who don't follow back after a certain period of time -- that's the only explanation when the following and follower counts are both large and similar.
3. They are not worth my time because they don't really care about who I am and what I have to say.
I'm sure no Mozzers would do something like this, but I do see it all the time. Please, marketing world, be smarter than that when trying to gain followers! :)
hi samuel, i think the number of followers is a personal decision. i know certain people and brands follow hundreds of thousands of people. it could be so that they have the ability to DM each other. or maybe they just feel that connections should be bi-directional in nature. I have 110k followers and follow 10k people but leverage various private lists to help make sense of the huge amount of updates.
"no one can possibly keep track of 10,000 people in a Twitter feed" I've heard this same arrogant hypocrisy before from "professional" marketers. Do you REALLY keep track of the 700 YOU follow? Really? Or do you merely skim a portion of them? Do you do that each day? Do all 700 of them get a retweet each day? Each week? Month? I have over 90,000 people I follow back. There is indeed no way to track them all. BUT I do skim them, and I do respond when one of them has something urgent to say. I also place the majority of my tweets in the service of the best stuff from the best tweeters I follow – so that THEY gain followers, which indirectly benefits me. Meanwhile, the majority of the folks I follow, who perhaps are not the most compelling tweeters, at least get the benefit and the dignity of a return follow. This approach of placing the people I follow first (rather than prattle on about myself) has netted me over 600,000 views on my website in the past few years. During which time, BTW, I have NOT ONCE tweeted about the site. But Samuel Scott would never follow me back, simply because I "follow too many people" whereas he follows the "right" number. No worries for my part re his following me back, though. I would never follow him in the first place.
another benefit of following 10,000 people (or whatever big number) is that i can use a tool like nuzzel which will figure out what is trending in my network. having a bigger network means i'm less likely to miss out on a big story. but anyway, like i said. i think the number of people you follow is a personal decision.
Best article on buying followers i've ever seen, bravo Larry!
thanks guys.
Brilliantly written.
Buying fake followers is gross. You definitely get much better value for money buying legitimate followers through Twitter advertising.
amen! and thanks.
Great, easy-to-follow post. I've just started testing this out and it's been pretty successful. Can't say my cost per follower is quite as low as yours though. That is impressive!
Your cost per follower is inversely proportional to the follow-rate. get that engagement rate up and your costs will go down!
Very interesting method to earn real followers.
I agree with not buy fake followers.
I'll try with a campaign on Twitter to see how it goes.
Thank you.
Definitely agree with not buying fake followers. I believe the other clicks and engagement you get through the ads with out costs is the real bonus in this.
In my experience the cost/follower is typically much higher than what you provide in this article. Any ideas on the discrepency?
yeah -- the cost is inversely proportional to the follow rate. so basically make the ads convert to followers like crazy by promoting really interesting content and nailing the targeting, as mentioned in the article.
One thing about the targeting, as I understand it: If you have a large-ish, well-curated group of followers you follow (as I do), you can have Twitter target a profile that resembles those people. I am guessing this can go a long way in terms of greasing the wheels of this strategy, especially if (like me) you regularly unfollow unresponsive folks on your list. This means Twitter are more likely to 'see' folks who are truly into your message, rather than just following you in exchange for your follows.
you can choose to target twitter follower campaigns to people who resemble your current follower base. it will typically expand your audience pool by 10x. For example, if you have 100k followers, they will find a million accounts with similar interests/behaviors/demographics. i usually select this option since my follow campaigns are based on targeting a small impression share of a big audience in order to keep costs down. the only situation where i don't use similar audience expansion is if the promoted tweet is specifically tailored to a more narrow audience in order to drive ridiculously high engagement rates.
Never found wise the idea of buying followers. With a 'click' you can see an audit and check if the followers you have are fake or not. In the case you have bought a lot of them, the light will turn red!!
If you want real followers just tweet something interesting and they will come to you sooner or later. Something related to your background, of course; there's no other better way.
one way to reduce fake followers is to narrow your targeting. for example, using lists and remarketing.
Brilliantly written.
Costs will certainly be higher , but will get a genuine follower and not buy fake Twitter followers , Huuh money where I can wait that want to follow me on my twitter account
really sucks hahahaha
You are so up my street! Thank you for this post beautifully written. I am still watching and learning... All the best
Isn't that expensive?
Cool story:) TU bro
Great guideline of using twitter ads. But seriously, i don't really see any point to pay to get follower.
but what about all the other benefits -- being viewed by twitter as influential and having your tweets curated by the platform (search results, email digests, etc.) and all the free engagement you don't have to pay for (clicks, retweets, profile views, etc.) -- the typical follow rate is 0.1%, which means that 99.9% of the time your ads show, you pay nothing...
What about the followers who first follow us and then unfollow shortly?
Followback men! Its not bad technique, agressive, and segmentated, but bad image for brands.
no it's basic technique.
in terms of ads, you pay if someone follows you if you're running a twitter follower ad campaign. you don't get a refund if they subsequently unfollow, unfortunately.
Let’s face the truth! A lot of social media activity has been thinly already veiled narcissism. People, giving themselves a pat on the back once their newest post on Instagram gets more than 10 likes, should certainly be temped by the idea of purchasing more Twitter followers.
Why not do both? Do the stuff above after you already bought some real looking followers. Your new followers will never know and you'll get more to follow you becouse you already look cool and popular.
couple of thoughts: (a) it is theoretically possible that one day twitter will drain the swamp and roll out some kind of clean-up algorithm much like google did with penguin. (b) i think accounts with huge numbers of followers and low engagement look weird - since fake accounts don't often engage with your stuff (c) it just seems relatively easy to buy real followers imho so i favor real over fake (d) there are huge benefits of buying real followers other than just increasing your follower number, as described in the post.
for a quick boost of your business profile and to get more traffic on your post buy followers and like from authrntic source like www.smhike.com i recommend this site for real Instagram followers and likes.
Great article!
I tried those techniques in my account, and here are my observations:
1. When I set location to United States, and target cost $0.40, I got decent number of followers at the same cost.
2. When I added few countries, my cost went down to around 0.12 per follower, but most followers came from third world countries like Indonesia and India. Those followers are not likely to become my customers and do any real engagement.
So my question is: is it worth to pay more (almost 4 times) for US followers? Is quality in this case better than quantity?
i'd target the ads in the countries / states that correspond to your target buyer persona.
My business is online, so theoretically, I can have clients from all over the world (and I do have from 40+ countries). But 80% come from US and Canada.
since your ad budget is limited and precious, i'd focus on those 2 countries.
Very nice and interesing article :) Thank you for sharing your idea !
Very nice article that you have posted, this kind of article can help so many people who are using social media :)
I agree, this is one of the very best posts on this subject that I have ever seen.
Great work Larry. I've always struggled to grow on twitter so I'll give this a shot and if it work personally I know a few clients who will love it!
Larry: I believe your advice in this post is sound. I have an account (@patriotsofmars) of about 140,000 followers, of whom I currently follow back about 95,000 (always weeding out the unresponsive). I feel strongly that your approach is the way to grow from here. I wonder if you have any insight regarding the advantages or disadvantages of paying more (or less) per follower. You mention a cost of $2 per follower, but in the actual example you cite you offered 50 cents and paid 13 cents. Do you have any idea (perhaps thru anecdotes heard from colleagues) what would have happened had you offered $2, or 13 cents, or 5 cents? I'm guessing (just a guess, based on zero experience) that below a certain 'bid' point you simply get outbid every time (and gain no followers), or maybe it just takes a lot longer to get your followers, while at the high end you get priority from Twitter and reach your quotient right away. Also, a follow-up: I am guessing you would be LESS likely to follow-back new followers you discovered this way? (You have already, literally, paid for their follow, and perhaps feel less of an obligation to 'pay' again via follow-back.) My sense is that I would only follow the most compelling accounts I discovered this way (i.e., by paying for them).
One last thing: Agree also about promoting the 'unicorn tweet'. I plan to use Twitter Analytics for this, promoting recent tweets that have already proven themselves in the marketplace of ideas.
Twitter ads algorithm leverages an "expected CPM" model which is based on your predicted engagement rate times the bid amount. A higher bid amount will increase expected CPM, which will generate more impression share. that may or may not matter depending on how quickly you want to gain followers and how big an audience there is to buy. If you aren't in a hurry to pick up followers (or have very limited budget) and if your audience is broad and large in nature, it would be OK to bid low and buy the followers more slowly/cheaply over time. it's just like paying for 2-week shipping rather than next-day delivery. the faster you want the goods, the more you pay. If your expected CPM drops too low, impression share drops to zero. the other way to raise expected CPM is to use high engagement content in your promoted tweet. i never follow back people who i acquire via ads, unless they engage with me, in which case i usually follow back.
This has been an excellent post, and thank you for this detailed, thoughtful response re cost as well. This information re sponsored tweets is surprisingly difficult to find online. One excellent 'contrarian' aspect of this approach is the simple fact that very few average people are (as far as I can tell) Twitter-sophisticated enough to attempt it. In fact, by what I'm seeing from the 'social media experts' in this forum, they often reject it out-of-hand as well. That of course means there's (relatively-speaking) less headwind and 'noise' out there in terms of people attempting this. I think this is a good way to build a standout Twitter account (predicated on good content, or it doesn't work). In a monetary sense, I expect the lack of visibility and understanding on this issue is bad for Twitter (the company), but that's their problem (unless the company collapses financially because of it, but that appears unlikely). Also, I find the prospect of folks deciding to follow me of their own volition (simply because they saw my tweet) a much better approach than other methods (such as targeted follows in hopes of return follows, constantly pushing the account address in conversation, advertisements outside of Twitter, etc). Your point re followbacks of followers resulting from sponsored tweets is also well-taken, and I suspect it is the appropriate response to such follows.
I prefer real followers. I don't really see any point or value to pay to get follower. We can get it through advertising.
"I don't really see any point or value to pay to get follower. We can get it through advertising." If you are advertising to gain followers you are already paying for followers. You are just pretending you are not paying for them.
yep your time isn't free either. organic social media is actually pretty expensive.
Absolutely.
Twitter campaign is one and only legit way to collect followers if you are willing to get targeted people for the engagement But if you are just trying to increase in your followers number then you want to buy those random automated followers.
Great post. I definitely agree that those spam accounts are terrible and don't really add any ROI. Thanks for the info!
Hi How Are you? My name is Manuel and I am from Spain, forgive my English.
This post is very good, I use a tool called Manager Flitter to have my mind clean Spam and Twitter users have real followers.
I hope this helps my comment, a greeting
Always opt for organic rather than paid.
That's all I have to say.
And rock with your content, too.
Merry Christmas from PopArt Studio Novi Sad.
In social media.. followers are very important for any types of business. This artice can help people to get heavy followers to twitter account.
Real Followers are likely to stay for long.. and they might Re-Tweet and share or they may even embed your tweet.. So there is no point in Buying Followers.. Earn them.. Don't Purchase them.. :)
i think you have to earn the followers even if you're using twitter ads...
Wow, I'm shocked this post is here!
My opinion of Moz and Larry Kim has gone down substantially after reading this post. Buying followers is wrong, however you want to make it look.
I thought you guys were better than this but clearly I was wrong.
Greg, I think you're being a little unfair to Larry and Moz.
Yes, buying bulk robot followers for cheap is stupid. But that's not what Larry is advocating (in my opinion). Businesses can pay to get in front of a real, targeted audience that may choose to follow them. It's actually not that different from traditional advertising.
Say I see an ad for a new soda on TV. If it piques my interest, I might go out and buy a bottle to try. If I like it, I might continue to buy and thereby become a "follower" of that brand. In the same way, a promoted account might pique my interest and I might choose to try and follow the social account of that person or business.
Same as it ever was.
The dirty little secret in social media is that "brand engagement" for free was always going to be BS. No one wants to "have a conversation" with the soda that they drink. What percentage of posts on Facebook or Twitter are about people talking about brands?
And why would any for-profit company give other for-profit companies a way to make money for free?
Facebook essentially pulled a massive bait-and-switch -- the company got companies on board by talking about "free brand engagement with fans" but then cut off the fan reach and made companies pay to get in front of audiences.
Whether it's by companies paying to get followers or paying to get in front of people, social networks are becoming just another advertising channel that companies can choose to include in their marketing promotion mixes.
I'm sorry, is Larry not giving money so he can increase his follower account? I know many won't like hearing it, but I feel that strategy is wrong.
Who here is not trying to increase engagement with a potential audience via time, effort, or money? Unless you're already a successful brand with a favorable image, we are all "paying" for followers, one way or the other. It's not any different than advertising with facebook to get qualified Likes, or using PPC with google to bring relevant traffic to your site.
I'll definitely be trying this out, since it seems like a great way to build an appropriate audience that fits in with a specific community. Thanks Larry!
--Mark
How is it any different buying followers through an ad campaign on Twitter than using AdWords to get more traffic to your site?
You should consider actually reading the post instead of scanning. One of his main points is exactly what you said. Paying to get in front of people with the goal of them loving (or following) YOUR BUSINESS is always the goal. lol.