Last Updated on 1 March 2017

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Five secrets to make even stronger, meaningful connections with your Twitter followers.

For each and every person who has chosen to follow you on Twitter:

  1. Read their profile.
  2. Follow and explore the link they provided in their bio.
  3. Send a personal direct message to each and every one who chooses to follow you.
  4. If they are listed as a company (instead of a person) visit their site and find out their name. Use their name in your thank you note.
  5. If they don’t allow direct messages on Twitter, visit their website and use an email provided or say “thank you” in their website’s contact form.

My thank you starts with this:

[person’s name], thank you for choosing to follow me.
I hope you find my tweets interesting. – Paul

  • I include their name. I then further personalize the ‘thank you’ with something interesting I read on their site. Something we have in common. Or, call out that we should talk because we have such similar interests.
  • Sometimes, if the follower speaks another language, I’ll even use Google Translate to try to convert my ‘thank you’ into their native language.
  • If it is a company and it is unclear who the twitter’er is, and when visiting the website there is a small team, I’ll address my message to the team.
    Shannon, John, Jeff, and Amanda, thank you for choosing to follow me….
  • If there are too many people listed, I’ll outright ask “who is tweeting?

I’m genuine with my comments. I won’t flatter simply to flatter, that’s dishonest. If I can’t find a meaningful connection due to different interests, or not enough information I will – at minimum – send my basic thank you.

It is an honor to have Twitter followers who, when you write something worthy, pass it onto their following. And, that reaction repeats itself with their followers.

We should respect the relationship we can build with our followers. They are customers of our content. We are responsible to maintain the quality of our tweets, so that with each new tweet, they are happy – all over again – they chose to follow us.