All Twitter users find themselves asking the question “Who should I follow?” at one point or another. Considering there are 319 million active users on Twitter, it’s a very reasonable question. Deciding who to follow can be quite an intimidating task.

Whether you’re setting up the platform for the first time, rebranding your business, or spring cleaning your Twitter account, we have some tips below to help you figure out who to follow on Twitter.

Brainstorming Session

To begin, it’s important to identify your main goal is for using Twitter. Are you using it to simply interact with people you may know and current customers, or are you aiming to gain new customers by promoting your brand/products? We recommend mixing together both of these strategies to create a personal yet professional approach.

After you’ve decided the main reason for using Twitter, take some time to list out the following:

• Target market
• Current clients
• Industry leaders
• Relevant media
• Top competitors

From here, check out if these users are active on Twitter, what they are sharing, and identify if they are worth following. This list will help you see what key influencers in your industry are talking about, stay on top of what competition is up to, and provide visibility to the media.

Finding Followers

Twitter has a variety of features available to help you create a baseline of followers, such as importing email contacts, finding friends, or using their suggested followers features. Although some of these may be helpful, the majority of them will not align with your list that you created above.

You can use the “Advanced Search” or “Filters” feature on Twitter if you want a very specific search, but we’ve find the regular search works best.

• Type in the business, subject, hashtag, or person you’re looking for, and a list or related accounts will appear.
• Narrow your search a bit more by toggling between the “Top, Latest, People, Photos, Videos, News, and Periscopes” buttons at the top of the page.

For example, if we search “social media marketing” in the search bar then click on “people” (since we’re looking for the top influencers to follow), here’s what comes up:

 

These are some of the people believed to be leaders in our industry. The blue check mark next to their name indicates they’re “official,” which is something to keep in mind when following accounts.

Be on the lookout for these items when choosing whether or not to follow an account:

1. The last time they’ve shared content. If they haven’t updated within the past month or two, they’re not an asset to you, at least not in the Twitter world.
2. Number of followers. If they have very few followers, it may be a red flag that this account isn’t the right one, or they aren’t sharing beneficial information.

Helpful Tools

Manually searching for key followers on Twitter can be time-consuming and tedious. Below are some of the free sites we’ve found helpful to identify Twitter followers, leaders, and relative hashtags.

1.         Followerwonk
2.         Klear
3.         Twitonomy
4.         Tweepsmap

Through brainstorming, Twitter search, and helpful third party tools, you should now have a decent sized list of appropriate followers on your Twitter account. Through relevant posts, trending hashtags, and interaction with your influencers, you should see your own follower list increase as time goes on, too!

If you have anymore questions on researching followers or Twitter in general, please reach out to the Tomo360 team at [email protected].