After all the mention of Twitter recently I thought I’d just share my thoughts now that I got to 1000 followers.
There’s nothing to it.
It’s just a nice place full of interesting people doing interesting things all over the world.
What am I doing with them? Nothing!
Well, actually I’m talking to them - it’s fun, they’re really interesting people.
Yes I could push a bunch of promotional links a few times a day and try and turn these people into something more, but right now a few strangers are becoming friends and I’m finding out some people are doing really cool things, so I’m good with that.
So - if you’re wondering how to get 1000 followers - all you need to do is find people who like what you like and talk to them. It’s as simple as that.
If you just tap-in to what you’re passionate about you can find a lot of people who you can relate to on a real level.
If you just go spamming people and trying to sell stuff, you might make a few sales but you’ll miss the best part of using Twitter.
I know that’s not a very IM thing to say, but hey I’ve never been very conventional when it comes to IM.
So - I say get on Twitter, meet some cool people and maybe you’ll get Friends, business partners and revenue.
There are some Twitter habits you might like to consider when you get going:
1 - Use the search tool and Twitter directories to find people that have your interests.
Many people just charge around following anyone they can find and then wonder why they’re following 5 times more people than are following them, and why people stop following them so often.
2 - Set your systems up so that Twitter doesn’t intrude.
This can be as simple as just using a desktop application to do all your twittering, or really complicated and using email filters and separate folders with an autoresponder message.
Many people use a tool called ‘tweetlater’ to notify them when someone follows them, tweetlater can also be configured to send ‘tweets’ for you at predefined times and even to send everyone that follows you a nice message.
If you’re using Twitter for your business you could use this facility to send them to a free gift or to find out more about your business.
3 - Your tweeting platform.
If like me you travel a lot but still want to access Twitter, you can have the messages sent to your phone, you can access it with a web enabled phone/blackberry etc. and there is a mobile version to make viewing on mobile devices more effective.
This is handy but sometimes phone compatibility issues can mean that you can’t login properly so test your access before going on a trip and then finding it doesn’t work.
Some of the most popular tools for tweeting are Twitteroo, Twitterific and Twitterpost. Twitterific is at http://twitter.com/twitterific,Twitterpost is at http://twitter.com/twitterpost andTwitteroo is at http://twitter.com/twitteroo
Whichever one you use, make sure you add the corresponding Twitter user to your friends list in Twitter so that you get updates on bugfixes etc.
See on there
http://www.twitter.com/andyhenry/
Andy