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You think you’re doing everything right–multiple tweets per week, retweeting the right people, using #hashtags, sharing interesting articles–but it doesn’t seem to be gaining you any new followers. Or maybe you’re just not tweeting the right way because you’re not into it…yet. Below are 5 reasons your tweets alone might not be working!

Reason #1: You aren’t promoting others

The culture of Twitter is very much tit-for-tat. The more you support others, the more they will support you. It’s easy to fall into the mindset that you have to be promoting yourself all the time. In reality, Twitter is a tool you should be using to find allies! To find allies who will support you, you need to reach out and show support for them. Did you read a great blog post? Pass it on to your followers, being sure to tag the Twitter user who wrote the blog! Pay a fellow tweeter a nice compliment, and respond to their prompts.

Reason #2: You have huge time gaps between your activity

This is a big one, especially if you’re the kind of person who waits for things to pile up and then does them all at once. You need to be tweeting regularly, and every day, for it to be effective. You’ll lose followers if you’re inactive. The best way to increase the frequency of posts is to schedule them out and automate them. The Social Media Examiner has 13 great social media tools that can help you in becoming a more consistent tweeter. Also, our new favorite social media tool is If This Then That (IFTTT)! It’s a great tool for connecting lots of social media outlets, creating triggers that cause a reaction. For example, you might wish to set a trigger that sends a thank-you tweet every time someone mentions you in a tweet. Or, you might wish to forward your Gmail to Facebook. It’s totally customizable!

Reason #3: There isn’t enough variety in your posts

Are you repeatedly sending out the same blog entries over and over again, without sharing new kings of information? Are you using the same two #hashtags over and over again? Are you ever responding to the prompts and tweets of others? There should be enough variety in your posts to keep it interesting! My recipe (this is the minimum; if you increase it, you should keep the general ratio): at least one tweet per day responding to someone else’s tweet (make sure to tag them in the tweet!), at least one tweet per day promoting someone else (again, make sure you tag them in the tweet), at least one RT (retweet) per day, at least one tweet per day sharing an interesting article or video, at least one tweet per day promoting yourself, and ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS using #hashtags (mix it up–don’t use the same ones over and over!).

Tweeters, what have you found to be effective? How many hashtags do you regularly use? Do you use social media management sites (like Hootsuite or Buffer)?

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