As if I didn't have plenty of obligations already in this world, I've recently added on Twitter to the list of "things to do on a VERY regular basis". WHAT am I thinking?
This coming from someone who is already obsessed with email, Facebook, blogging, and... MY BLACKBERRY! Now, I've taken the very deep plunge into the Twit world.
When did it start? Well, I THINK it was about October of 2008. I had heard Twitter in passing somewhere and wanted to just SEE what it was. Well, typical for me, I immediately signed up because just reading and watching their little video about it wasn't enough.
My internalized conversation went something like this, "Hmm.... this looks dumb. Why would anyone want to tell everyone else 'What are you doing' all the time? What do I care when someone has to go to the bathroom or walk the dog or wants to cheer for UConn (God forbid)." So, I finished the 3 minute sign-up process then pretty much forgot about it.
So, fast forward two months: January 2009 (and 8 followers later). I attend a Legal Marketing with Twitter and LinkedIn meeting presented by the ever-influential-legal-blogging-networking-god, Kevin O'Keefe of Lexblog. The first and most important piece of Twittercation (twitter education, don't worry, there's an entire twiiter vocabulary!!) was that I should use a third-party application to manage and ready my twitter feed. Why? Because watching one single file scrolling line of a feed makes it very difficult to skim and by using a program like TweetDeck or the all new Seesmic, you can categorize your twitter followers into groups based on your preferences.
Before I get too far ahead of myself, what I also learned from Kevin was that the objective of Twitter was not to necessarily get MORE followers, but just more genuine followers. Followers who follow you because they like what you say and want to know you. But, how do you do that? There are a couple important steps.
- Search for content that interests you. Look for a trend on who is sending out that information. Follow them.
- Once you follow them, if you see them sending out article links or content of interest "retweet" their helpful info. By retweeting you show others that their content is important to you. By retweeting their info they sometimes end up following you. After all, "Anyone who is smart enough to retweet my info must be one hellova genius!"
A couple starter tips that I used was to find followers of people I really respected (Kevin) and started following JUST for the simple fact they were following Kevin. This process is hit and miss. It doesn't usually give you the exact contacts you're looking for, but if someone ONLY tweets very specific information then their followers are likely dedicated to that topic.
Also, watch for RT (retweets) from twits you like and respect. If they RT information you find interesting, they also tell you in the RT who originated the tweet. So, take a look at that twit's profile and follow them.
So, two main keys to getting good followers:
1) Find twits of mutual interest
2) Tweet INTERESTING and valuable content
Git yer Twit on!
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