A lot of Nigerians have gotten fame and money by simply being influencers on Twitter. The “bird app” as it’s commonly called by Nigeria is one of the most used social media platforms in the country; topped only by Whatsapp, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. If you’re a regular Twitter user in Nigeria, you would agree that it can be difficult to get engagement.
Influencers on the app have tens to hundreds of thousands of followers. This is why their posts get high numbers of likes and comments. However, they all created their first Twitter account and started with zero followers. The main question to ask is, how did they get to where they are? Well, to help answer that question, here are tips on how to become a Twitter influencer in Nigeria;
1. Gain Authority To Gain Followers
To become a Twitter influencer, the core thing you need is active followers. When you open your Twitter account, you start from zero and start “hustling” for followers. Most influencers will tell you to post good content, unique content, etc. However, without the audience (followers) to engage them, a “unique content” will take you nowhere. Even, top influencers may copy your post and make it yours.
To gain followers, you need to gain authority. It’s more about who you know than what you know on Twitter. So, look for a way for already established influencers to acknowledge you. You don’t necessarily need to pay them for the promotion. Even if you do, it’s important to keep the promotion as natural as possible.
2. Tap into Luck
Have you heard about being in the right place at the right time? Well, that could help you become an influencer on Twitter much faster than you would think. This has to do more with trends. For example, people have become Twitter influencers by tweeting updates about football games whilst an important game is going on.
If you check the trends and there’s a hot topic on the table, you can try creating content around it. Don’t make the mistake of tweeting about an entirely different thing and then just adding the trending topic as a hashtag. People who click on the trend want to get updates about that particular topic and could easily skip your post at a glance.
3. Carry out individual interactions
When a top influencer makes a post, you’re sure to find many comments. Now, you can visit the comment section and individually interact with the commenters. For example, so maybe asking questions about something they don’t fully understand from the post. By answering their questions, you’ll show that you’re knowledgeable in that particular niche and it could earn you a follower.
Also, you can simply jump on trends and interact with people who are not so popular. Engage their posts and if they value your engagement, they’ll follow you. This might seem time-consuming but, it’s one of the best hacks on how to become a Twitter influencer in Nigeria.
4. Follow Others
This is another method of individual interaction and it’s quite common on Nigerian Twitter. There are always people who’re asking that they should be followed. All you need to do is follow them and ask them to follow you back. The only “problem” here is that your follower count will increase as much as your following count. The more people you follow, the more followers you get.
5. Optimize and Be Consistent
Don’t make the mistake of not valuing your followers because they aren’t much. 100 followers are still people and if you’re not consistent, you don’t post valuable content, the unfollow button is always there. What this simply means is that if you’re not consistent with your posts, you will lose followers instead of gaining them.
About optimization, you’ll need to make your Twitter account unique. This has to do with the type of profile picture you use, cover photo, and your bio. All of these should be in accordance with the type of post you make. At the same time, they should be as original as possible.
6. Make polls on interesting topics
A lot of Twitter users underestimate the value of polls. Polls are the easiest way to get engagement. You can test it. Even if you have zero followers, create polls around any of the trending topics and you’ll see that you’ll get multiple votes. It’s easier for a Twitter user to click on a poll to vote than reading text, viewing images, or watching videos.
Engagement from polls will work most for music, football (or sports in general), and political niches. The goal of becoming an influencer can be achieved by high engagement and high engagement can be achieved by being noticed. If people constantly engage with your polls and like the options, they’ll follow you so they don’t miss the next one.
7. Tweet Images
Just like polls, images get high engagements on Twitter. You know people love visual content a lot if they can use Instagram that allows only such content. If you use Twitter regularly, you’ll know how important memes are. Memes can be included in any situation no matter the content.
No matter what you’re posting, even if you just want to pass a message via text, you should include an image if you can. Pictures are easier to “read” than texts. Twitter users will easily click to view an image than reading the text you write. If the image meets their interest, you have a high chance of them engaging your post.
Bottom Line
Twitter is one of the hardest social media platforms to get natural engagement. This is because it is a multimedia follower-based social media platform. Twitter users can post text, images, videos, voice notes, etc. On average, 6,000 tweets are sent per second globally so it’s very easy to get lost in the crowd.
Nevertheless, if you’re keen, you can follow the above tips on how to become a Twitter influencer in Nigeria. They are very simple tips which won’t be difficult to follow. What you should know is that it’s not always easy, it might take your time to achieve.