What is Twitter? Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them.
So many people offer so many different pieces of advice on schemes and tools to use to get a large following. One person will say use auto responders and another automatic feeds. Friends, these are all schemes, the best and most effective way to get people to follow you on twitter can be summed up as follows:
Be authentic
- Write about things that interest you
- Post articles and topics of interest to you
- Respond to people who post something of interest to you
- Seek out other people who write about things you are interested in
The thing to remember about twitter is like any other social networking tool (and it is a tool) no different than a phone is that this is a true democracy. People have a choice to follow or unfollow you at any time based strict on whether what you post is of interest or not.
I personally have people follow and unfollow me daily. Some because they loose interest and others because I process too much information for them to handle and still others because I may write something that upsets, offends or challenges something causing them to step out of their comfort zone – not something everyone can do.
Remember this – if you are interested in something, someone else may also be interested in it. Some may have a serious interest and others may have a passing interest.
Also by being authentic I mean write about what interests you. In my case my streams deals with:
- Government
- Technology
- Blackberry
- Business
- Law and Ethics
- Business Development
- Wealth Creation
- Finance
- Anime
- SciFi
- Rndom things that catch my fancy like the 1967 Chevy Firebird or a quote I read or someone elses words, etc
So you are getting started – are there tools you can use other than the web interface. Yes, one I personally like is tweetdeck for your computer. Because it lets you create and track keywords or interest. The ones I track are
- Mutual friends
- @lspearmanii
- Direct messages
- Wealth Creation
- Surveillance
- Minority Business
For your phone there are many applications that exist. Instead of my trying to list them all here are some places to look:
If you have any questions feel free to comment and I will answer here because others may also have the same question.
Be well and enjoy tweeting – sorry if you were looking for a scheme but I think this method will work best because you will engage people of like minds and interest and actually have conversations with them.
PS - here are some tool to allow you to visualize your network
