Your Twitter follower count is an important social media marketing metric. As a result, there are numerous articles on the internet giving you advice on how you can gain more Twitter followers. But there are very few who back that advice with solid research.

5 Scientifically-Proven Tactics to Get More Twitter Followers

1. Be an informer, not a meformer

According to a research conducted at Rutgers University, only 20 percent of social media users are informers, while the remaining 80 percent are meformers.

What exactly is a meformer?

The Rutgers team coined the term “meformers” after analyzing data from a sampling of Twitter accounts.

Meformers are users whose social media updates mostly relate to themselves. In other words, meformers tend to have a more narcissistic approach to social media.

Like this guy!

On the other hand, users who post updates that are mostly information-sharing are called informers.

The Rutgers team found a clear distinction between those who share information and those who share about themselves.

So how does this relate to the number of Twitter followers?

Informers had more than two times the followers of meformers.

It’s clear that sharing information on Twitter is better for your follower count than sharing about yourself.

How can you tell which category you fall into? The research study also included an interesting breakdown of the classification of tweets. Generally, tweets were classifed into 9 major categories:

1. Information sharing. Ex: “10 Tips to Get More Subscribers for your Blog”
2. Self promotion. Ex: “Check out my blog post about SEO”
3. Opinions/Complaints. Ex: “Led Zeppelin is the best band ever.”
4. Statements and random thoughts. Ex: “Just had the most amazing pizza.”
5. Me now. Ex: “I’m so tired.”
6. Question to followers. Ex: “What should my video be about?”
7. Presence maintenance. Ex: “Good morning, tweeps!”
8. Anecdote (me). Ex: “oh yes, I won an electric steamboat machine and a steam iron at the block party lucky draw this morning!”
9. Anecdote (others). Ex: “Most surprised <user> dragging himself up pre 7am to ride his bike!”

According to the Rutgers study, 53 percent of the tweets from informers fell into the Information Sharing category, whereas 48 percent of the meformers’ tweets were information about themselves.

Takeaway

Be in the information sharing category on Twitter and be less of a meformer. The key to getting 2x more followers on Twitter is to share less about yourself.

[Read the full article at 99signals.com]