There was a huge boom in my daily Twitter following growth last month. I went from about 100 new followers every week and a half to approximately 60 per day. That is six times the rate I was growing at before. It was crazy!
So how did it happen?
I decided I wanted to take social media growth more seriously. If I want to publish my book, I need a strong base. If I want to learn more, I need to network more. 200 or so new followers a month was not cutting it.
So I signed up for Crowdfire, and it is the primary cause for my sudden rise in followers. But what exactly is Crowdfire?
Crowdfire is an online marketing tool that allows you to connect various social media sites - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. - and manage them from a single application. Crowdfire analyzes keywords chosen by you and makes suggestions of who to follow, what to like, and what to share. It also analyzes your relationship with your followers and who you follow.
Every day Crowdfire will give you recommendations called Prescriptions. This is a series of activities for you to perform that are designed to increase your engagement with your social media platforms. From my experience, these have included liking posts that include my keywords, following people who tweet about the keywords, sharing popular images, sharing blog posts and articles, and following followers of accounts.
It also lets you schedule tweets and shares at specific times of your choosing, or for what Crowdfire determines to be the best time. Since the majority of fledgling (and even established) content creators still have full- or part-time jobs, this feature is quite handy. It also lets you set up an automatic direct message, though I don’t use that particular feature.
Crowdfire also has multiple pricing tiers. The base account is free, but comes with daily limitations and a limit on how many accounts you can have. As the subscription becomes more costly, the application becomes more comprehensive.
So why has Crowdfire been so helpful?
To be honest, the Prescriptions haven’t reaped benefits in engagement. You really need to get your keywords exact. I put in “anti-hero” because of my Nightshade stories and have been seeing post after post for Anti Hero IPA beer. Side note: I want to try Anti Hero IPA now.
I have skipped the popular image sharing option, too, as it has never had anything to do with my brand.
The real value I have found in Crowdfire is from copy and keyword follower features. By adding people that I follow that are similar to me, Crowdfire suggests their followers that are likely to follow me as well. I go through this list and usually add 100 people a day that will either help me grow or expand my base - authors, bloggers, creators, independent publishers, etc.
The whole idea is that these people are more likely to follow me back, thus expanding my network and growing my following on Twitter. Of the 100 people I follow per day, approximately 60-80 of them follow me back. Combined with the natural growth that comes from a regular presence on Twitter, consistent blog posting, and other networking, it has accelerated my growth at a rate that I was not actually prepared for!
Now, some of you may be thinking that you want Twitter followers of quality, rather than quantity. This made me resist using Crowdfire at first. But then I changed my mind. But that, my friends, is a conversation for Thursday’s blog!
Let me know in the comments below if you have ever used Crowdfire and what you think of it. I especially want to hear from those who have used other marketing tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. Be sure to let me know your thoughts on those below!
Until Thursday, my friends.