How to use Twitter - Part 1 - Followers

This is the first part of a series of blog posts intended primarily for Webreality clients who want to make better use of Twitter.

Future posts will cover re-tweeting, Twitter search, mobile Twitter, Twitter tools and creating your Twitter routine.

What’s a follower?

A “follower” is another Twitter user who has chosen to include your tweets in their view of Twitter. So on their Twitter home page your tweets will appear in the stream of tweets they see.

How do I get followers?

You can get new followers by activity in Twitter and things you do elsewhere on the internet.

With a new Twitter account the quickest way to build your following is to get “follow-backs.” This means you follow other Twitter users with the aim of getting them to follow you in return. Most Twitter users have their account set up to send them an email whenever someone new follows them. So every time you follow someone they have the chance to click on a link in the automated notification email and look at your page in Twitter. Many of them will then follow you. This is called a “follow-back”. The secret to getting follow-backs is choosing the people you follow carefully to make sure they are likely to be interested in you.

You will also find that you can build your following by re-tweeting. This means taking a tweet by someone you follow and re-publishing it as a tweet of your own. (My next post in this series will cover re-tweeting etiquette.) Twitter users who track their own tweets being re-tweeted will often follow people who re-tweet them.

It’s also a good idea to engage with the Twitter cultural phenomenon of “Follow Friday” in which users tweet the Twitter names of other users they consider worth following. Again, users who track references to their Twitter name will often at least acknowledge your “Follow Friday” in a tweet, and might also follow you as a result.

Outside of Twitter itself, you should use every online opportunity to invite people to follow you.

• Your website should include a “follow me” link to your Twitter page.
• If you run a blog, do the same.
• If you promote your business in online forums, have a standard sign-off for your contributions which invites people to follow you.
• Add a suitable link to your standard email sign-off for business emails.
• If you use bulk email marketing include a “follow me” link in every email you send.

Managing your followers

There are so many reasons to be following people on Twitter. Researching your market, keeping ahead in your own area of expertise, learning about social media, learning about Twitter... But, it’s easy to overdose on Twitter. The standard Twitter home page view shows you the 20 most recent tweets by the people you are following. Unless you are staring at your Twitter home page all day, you’re going to miss a lot of other people’s tweets in your standard view. And the more people you follow the more tweets you’ll miss. So my advice is to be very strict with how many people you allow yourself to follow. Assuming that everyone you follow is a relatively active tweeter, my benchmark would be to follow no more than 100 people.

You might need to go way beyond that initially to get the early follow-backs you need, you’ll find that you want to follow new people all the time as you see re-tweets of great people, and you might decide periodically to actively research new people to follow to get fresh insights and new follow-backs. But it’s always worth pruning your own “following” list to remove the people who aren’t active or are no longer relevant or whom you followed early for a follow-back but never followed you!

Here’s a very useful article about managing your Twitter noise:

http://lavrusik.com/2009/08/31/tips-tools-to-keep-your-twits-organized-and-noise-to-a-minimum/

Next time... re-tweeting.