How to Get 85,000 more Twitter Followers

Lessons from a Porn Star

Bobbi Eden, a Dutch porn star, had a respectable following on Twitter of 4898 people, and then she announced she would give oral sex to all her followers if Netherlands wins the World Cup.

Since then her Twitter following has skyrocketed to over 90,000 and counting accompanied by coverage in the mainstream press.

Now she and her thousands of new  followers might not have a concept of time (or idle promises from good looking women), leaving many disappointed fans, but I’m sure there’s a marketing lesson in there somewhere. Sex sells, create incentive, and give your audience what they want?

It is common to see the top blogs and Twitter accounts using competitions and gifts as an incentive to gain subscribers. The ‘bribe’ is a common and very effective strategy to entice your potential audience into following you. That doesn’t mean you need to sell your body, but you get the idea.

If you’d like to run your own Twitter competition:

• Simply have a good prize on offer that your audience would want
• Keep it simple such as ‘follow to win’ or ‘retweet to win’.
• Announce the competition on Twitter
• Get the word out – contact other bloggers in your niche, get friends to retweet, contact mainstream media, do a press release etc.
• You can use TwitRand to pick winners at random, unlike Bobbi Eden who promises to give love to her entire follower list.

For extra effect run the competition in partnership with another prominent voice in your niche so the competition is put in front of both of your existing followers. Bobbi did just that enlisting @vickyvette @misshybrid and @gabbyquinteros to help out with the high demand.