Twitter for beginners

February 27, 2008

I saw this statistic in a Twitter Update

“…people who have 10 followers and are following about 10 people represent 50% of all Twitter-ers.”

As someone who did very little with Twitter in my first couple months but hung in there and now sees much more value in it, I’ll share some resources I’ve found helpful if you’re looking to add more people, and have more people add you.

1. Get one of the twitter desktop downloads. The desktop apps make following Twitter much easier. I’ve used Twhirl, Snitter, and Twitteriffic on my Mac, Snitter and Twhirl also work on Windows. On the mobile side, I have an iphone and use a mobile version.
   Go to this link to see other desktop applications for Twitter.
   
   
2. Find some friends: Twitter allows you to search your email address book by clicking on the ‘find and follow’; this will show you who if anyone you’ve corresponded with is on Twitter. If you’re like me and this turns up no one, you have to come up with another strategy. The first thing I did is look for people whose blogs I followed. Most people who blog today will have a twitter link on their blogs so that is relatively easy.

3. Still don’t have many people to follow? Add Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang. These two people have a lot to say about social media, Twitter and building communities. I followed their Twitter streams and occasionally added others that were following them if I found them interesting. This was very helpful for me.

4. Pay attention to the twitter stream and follow people that you find interesting, simple, yes, but I’ve added a number of people because someone that I’ve followed pointed to someone else.

5. Bookmark and use the Big Juicy Twitter Guide by Caroline MIddlebrook as a handy reference tool and to understand the lingo
   
   
6. Search: Not many people know this. You can search Twitter to find people or posts. -
   
   • You can go to http://www.tweetscan.com/index.php and search there. You can also search google and be site specific, e.g. enter site:twitter.com and then enter the words you’re looking for.
   • I really have enjoyed Twitter now that I have found geography! I went to google and entered site:twitter.com location minneapolis and started to follow people in my area. This led me to attend the first Minneapolis Social Media Breakfast and I got to meet face to face people that I had corresponded with on Twitter. Similarly, I entered site:twitter.com bio design and have followed folks that I found here
     
7. Twitter links of interest
   
   • Twitter Fan Wiki - Lots of stuff up here, almost too much, but the Apps, Bots, and mashups are helpful.
   • Twitter Pack wiki - This is an attempt to group twitterers to make it easier to find people. Some have said this forms cliques, but I fail to see that. It’s a wiki, so you can add your own name if you like. Look for the packs by topic or geographic location.
   • Search: TweetScan or Google with site specific search
   • Post your blog posts automatically to Twitter: Twitter feed
     
   • See who follows you and who you follow (and the overlap) via Twitter Karma
8. Questions - These are all personal preference, I’m sharing my preferences
   • How often should I Tweet? I Tweet when I feel like it which can sometimes be in batches and other times very scattered. I am definitely not in the 50 tweets a day category, and I generally don’t follow those people because for me personally, it becomes too much of a small group of people. But that’s me.
   • Should I converse with people (using @name) or just post to no one? I converse using @s when I have something to say to someone specifically, but I generally don’t follow someone who does nothing but @s because I am looking for someone who is speaking to the group at large first and foremost.
   • Should I follow every tweet that crosses my twitter stream? I definitely do NOT follow every Tweet, as Chris Brogan has said, I dip into the stream.
   • How many should I follow? Following people, again, is a personal threshold, I am hovering around 80 people, could see myself handling somewhere between 100-200 but can’t imagine the people following thousands.
   • Should I automatically follow someone who follows me? If someone follows me, I lean towards following them, but I do go to their twitter stream to see if they are very heavy posters (see 8a) or post a lot of @s to specific people (8b).

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