Twitter for Christian Entrepreneurs: 8 Tips for Establishing a Following

I used to dislike Twitter. I avoided it. It felt like gossip and uncontrolled noise.

Then, I had a change of heart. I realized that I could be using the platform to communicate with other Christian entrepreneurs the wisdom I was gaining from my morning Bible readings.

Everything changed when I saw Twitter as a platform for spreading God's word to the business marketplace.

The Bible says:

Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! (Psalms 96:3 ESV)

Those of us building a Christian personal brand can use Twitter to build our following, but there's a right way and a wrong way.

After experimenting, tweaking, adjusting, re-evaluating, I want to make sure you're establishing your following the right way on Twitter.

Here's an outline of the 8 tips for Christian bloggers, authors, coaches, consultants, and brands looking to establish a Twitter following and expand their message to this platform:

• Tweet frequently

• Optimize your posting time

• Post visual content

• Utilize hashtags

• Engage with replies, retweets, and tags

• Create an inviting profile

• Identify followers within your network

• Draw in followers outside of Twitter

No bots, no spammy tactics. Just eight actionable steps you can take ASAP to attract valuable, flesh-and-blood followers. Whether you’re after more leads or just want to get the attention of big names in your industry, the following tips are totally fair game.

---

1. Tweet As Often as You Study God's Word (often, right?)

Versus the likes of Facebook or Instagram, Twitter requires a more aggressive content strategy.

According to data by CoSchedule, the “sweet spot” is anywhere between three and seven tweets per day to maximize engagement. On @DailyGodpreneur, I tweet as often as 15 or 20 times per day, though! But that's directly proportional to the fact that I tweet as I do my Bible reading and studying.

I'm using Twitter as the first place I throw my ideas out.

I don't do much self-promotion. Occasionally I'm throwing out an offer for a course or membership, but it's a very small percentage vs my other tactics:

• Personalize Bible verses

• Golden nuggets from a great sermon, but in a "business" context

• Tweets from my followers

• Tweets from Christian leaders and I give a business spin to it

• Relevant Christian entrepreneurship industry articles

• Bible verses (as image or text)

• Buzzworthy stats

• Breaking news (if the news is your "thing")

• Personal updates (rarely)

The list goes on and on!

Filling up your Twitter feed with fresh content lets potential followers know that you’re active, engaging, and worth following.

With the help of social scheduling software, you can regularly queue up content without having to constantly tweet in real-time. This effectively allows you to attract new followers around the clock.

2. Time Your Tweets to Perfection

And speaking of timing, blasting your tweets while your target audience is sleeping won’t help you gain new followers.

I see the most engagement during weekdays in the early and late afternoons.

Figuring out how to get more Twitter followers doesn’t mean sitting in front of the screen for nine hours a day, either. Ideally, you should schedule tweets to hit the times where users are more active and tweet in real-time at intervals throughout the day as well.

3. Post More Visual Content

As you probably know, tweets containing visual content receive more likes, shares, and retweets than those without them.

As such, you should strive to couple your tweets with some sort of accompanying image. Although there’s nothing inherently wrong with solely text-based tweets, images are better poised to stop serial