So you’ve decided to check out this Twitter thing. Starting with a blank slate can be intimidating. So many users! What do you talk about? Who cares what I think anyways?
Think about your goals. Do you want to promote yourself? Do you want to promote your company? Maybe you just want to socialize.
Here are a few tips I can suggest:
1) Try and find people local to you. Go to the Twitter Advanced Search page and find people near you. At the very least you can complain about the weather!
2) Use the Twitter search to find people that share your interests, and start following them. Maybe you like video games or baseball? The search interface can be very useful! search.twitter.com.
3) Think about the websites you read, and the blogs that you follow. Are any of the authors using Twitter? Follow them! BONUS: If you tweet at them and they tweet back, their reply will show up in their feed, and some of their followers might follow you!
4) Just start tweeting! Talk about the things you are doing. People will find you based on your tweets about your interests (probably using the Twitter search). If you are slick enough, you can optimize your tweets for searchability (then people will find you).
For example, rather than tweet something like “On my way to work today, it’s raining”, try posting “Commuting on the GO Train on my way to Toronto. Damn this Canadian weather!”. It will appeal to people searching for commuting, go trains, toronto, canada, and weather!
5) Follow lots of people, and socialize, but remember, it’s not a competition to gather the most followers. If you have too many, your Twitter feed will be too cluttered to be useful. Don’t be afraid to “prune” your followers.
And finally:
6) It might feel like you’re “Stalking” people when you follow them… but you’re not, this is how Twitter works! Think about it, they’re tweeting, so they WANT people to read it.
Have fun! (oh, and follow me!)
Tags: Social, Tools, Web Presence
Created on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
