How to Grow Your Following on X (Formerly Twitter) With Influencers

The platform this guide was written about no longer exists under that name, and the influencer economics around it have shifted just as much. Twitter became X under Elon Musk’s ownership in July 2023, and brand influencer spending on the platform has fallen sharply since. The tactics worth using in 2026 look different as a result.

Influencer marketing spend on X declined 37% compared to 2022, with brands shifting those budgets to TikTok (up 54%), Instagram (up 18%), and YouTube (up 12%), largely over brand safety concerns, according to the Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2026 Annual Report. That’s the honest starting point for anyone still following the original 2018 version of this guide: growing a following through influencer relationships on this platform is a smaller, more specialized play than it used to be, not a default social strategy. Here’s what still works, and what’s changed since Twitter became X.

Follower count is still a real goal, but organic reach has fallen sharply

The original guide’s argument that follower count isn’t just a vanity metric still holds: reach, impressions, and the amplification effect of well-connected followers are all real. What’s changed is the baseline. Average organic engagement rate for brands on X fell from 0.049% in 2023 to 0.035% in 2026, according to 2026 platform research, and X Premium subscribers now see 6 to 10 times more impressions on their posts than non-subscribers, with Premium+ subscribers seeing up to 15 times more. Organic growth alone is a considerably steeper climb than it was in 2018, and a meaningful share of visibility is now tied to paid subscription tiers rather than organic algorithm favor.

Identifying relevant influencers, updated for a smaller pool

The original advice to prioritize micro-influencers with smaller, more engaged followings over mega-influencers is arguably more relevant now than in 2018. Average engagement on an X influencer post sits at just 0.09% across the platform, according to Sprout Social’s influencer marketing research, though video posts perform meaningfully better at 0.42%, nearly five times the platform average. A smaller creator putting out genuine video content on X is likely to outperform a large account posting text-only updates, which reverses some of the raw-follower-count logic the original guide leaned on.

Twitter Lists still exist on X, and the tactic still works

Lists survived the rebrand intact, and the original tactic, finding an influencer’s curated lists and engaging with the accounts on them, still functions the same way it did in 2018. It remains one of the lower-effort ways to surface genuinely relevant accounts in your niche, since a well-maintained list reflects real curation by someone already established in your space.

Asking for a shout-out, and what’s changed about it

The core advice, build a real relationship before asking, take the conversation to DM or email, make it easy for the influencer to say yes, still applies without much modification. What’s shifted is the broader economics behind why an influencer might say yes at all. Creator payouts on X remain modest for most accounts: X’s Creator Revenue Sharing program paid out more than $45 million to creators in 2025, but the top 1% of creators earned 82% of that total, leaving an average payout of roughly $180 per year, far below YouTube’s roughly $12,000 or TikTok’s roughly $800, according to a 2026 Creator Economy Report. Most mid-sized creators on X are not earning meaningful income from the platform directly, which means genuine relationship value, not platform monetization, remains the real currency behind a successful ask.

Cross-platform pollination still works, and X still has a distinct role

The original guide’s advice to feature influencers in blog content and ask them to share it remains sound, and it’s worth pairing with a broader influencer marketing strategy that spans multiple platforms rather than concentrating on X alone. That said, X still holds a distinct role worth factoring in: 89% of users report using the platform to discover new products, and 76% say conversations they see there influence their purchase decisions, according to X’s own 2026 business data. It’s a smaller, more specialized channel than it was in 2018, but for real-time conversation, news-adjacent topics, and B2B audiences specifically, it hasn’t been fully displaced.

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