People who don’t “get” Twitter should try harder to do so otherwise they may get left behind in their competitors’ feathers. I admit I did not get Twitter either but I wasn’t really using it properly. I followed only people I knew or people who others recommended. I think at the beginning of my foray into the big Twitter City, I was following approximately 5-10 people. Five – ten people do not generate enough tweets to be interesting. Not sure what I was worried about — cyberstalking? It’s definitely a head scratcher.
One day, I decided to look into some of the categories offered up by Twitter and focused on advertising, marketing, PR. Following people in this line of business is not hard for me to do because I am interested in advertising and marketing. I followed 10 people, then another 10 and another. Many of the Tweeters have blogs that give excellent advice for the small business person for FREE. Did you hear right? Yes, free advice that is actually very good. Some of the advice has been recycled and I’ve seen it so many times that it’s irritating at this point, but I am in the business of marketing so of course I’m going to see some similar info showing up. I wouldn’t have much of a self-education if I didn’t see repeated industry standard stuff every once in a while.
So far, hopefully you are following this Twiteducation Part I brought to you by a relative newbie in Twitter — the bottom line is you need an ID and you need to start following people in your industry and those in a complementary industry. Read what is being said in the tweets. Lurk for a while and then begin to post some comments on your own. Not all contact will be returned. Don’t be embarrassed or mad at being ignored, just keep going, keep reading, keep replying. If you cannot think of anything to say, simply retweet a comment or two that you liked. It could be a joke, a cleverly written blog, a bit of information you feel more people should know about, or anything you think is cool. And, by all means, keep adding people to the list of people you are following. You may be tickled to find out that they decide to follow you back.
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Great advice Cathie. That is the best way to operate on twitter. Just keep tweeting and mentioning people and retweet their content and you will have more twitter followers and even friends then you will know what to do with. People beginning on twitter or those who don’t get it should read this post.
Thanks, Tim! I do hope this post is of some help to others who have just started on Twitter and don’t want to sit around “twittlin’ their thumbs” like I did for the longest time waiting for more and more tweets from the 5 people I was following. Needless to say, once one of the prolific posters got a “real” job in social media, the number of new tweets to read went really down.
In that same vain, I’m not sure I could follow 55,000 people but who knows what I can and cannot do down the road??