Are you struggling to get more Twitter followers? Typically, users unfollow other users and brands when they no longer wish to see that person’s Tweets in their home timeline. Why? Twitter is a very noisy place. Chances are you’re committing one of these common errors:

3 Proven Behaviors to Get More Twitter Followers

1. You forgot the 80/20 rule

Who would you rather hang out with – someone who is informational and interesting or someone who is boastful and self-centered?

It’s hard to love someone who’s excessively self-promotional on social media. It’s OK to periodically tweet stuff about yourself, but if your stream looks like your blog’s RSS feed, you’re not being social.

The golden social media rule is: Talk about the things that matter to your customers most of the time; then you can talk about yourself a little bit of the time, and they won’t mind.

The 80/20 rule to get more Twitter followers

The 80/20 rule recommends posting engaging, informational and relevant content 80% of the time and brand-centric, call-to-action content only 20% of the time. This ratio is meant to keep your audience engaged with your social media presence while promoting your brand and improving sales simultaneously in a way that doesn’t make the account seem like little more than a digital salesperson.

How can you do this?

1. Follow influencers, and learn from what they find interesting.

2. Share interesting content with your own followers, and try to connect to them.

3. Engage with your influencers so it motivates them to want to share your own content.

Read: 4 Easy Steps to Promote your Business on Social Media when you have No Followers

2. Cat got your tongue?

To get more Twitter followers it's important to speak up - often

Twitter is a noisy platform and users tend to browse their timelines periodically. It’s like listening to the radio in the background, rather than trying to tune in for every single song. Unfortunately, if you’re not tweeting on a somewhat regular basis, the chances you’re actually appearing in front of your followers if and when they tune in becomes slim.

Georgia Tech researchers examined 500,000 tweets over 15 months to find the formula for building a Twitter following, they recommend: Tweet often, but not in bursts.

Burstiness, which one user described as spamming people’s Twitter feeds, will lose you followers, but tweeting often is a good thing, since “it’s all about being visible”. In real terms, that translates to an optimum frequency of eight tweets per hour, the research showed.

Read: How to Break 3 Social Media Bad Habits That Cause Followers to Unfollow Plus Solutions to Change

How do you craft the right posting schedule to get more Twitter followers? There is plenty of research on social media posting frequency. At the end of the day, each social audience is different. It is a matter of trial and error to get the right balance. We have written several posts on the subject containing the latest research:

3. I haven’t heard from you, so I moved on

Get more Twitter followers by engaging in conversations

This is a logical extension of the last point: Make sure you check in regularly to respond to @mentions, shout-outs, direct messages, and retweets. It’s not cool to blast out tweets and never engage the people who respond to them.

Vacations are important but don’t drop off the grid and disappear for days or weeks, if it can be avoided. Instead, engage with users and respond to your interactions every day, including weekends, so your profile never looks like a ghost town.

Pro Tip: Use a social media scheduling tool to automate your posting frequency. This tool will help you space out your updates, provide valuable engagement data and queue items for a future release, so you don’t become a slave to social media.

Follow the advice above and you will get more Twitter followers!