One of my closest friends has recently opened up a Twitter account and, in addition to
the typical doubts on #hashtags and the "
@ signs", the first thing that
he has asked me about by chat was: "and now who do I follow? "
Doesn't it happen that every time you remember your first steps in social media and
microblogging networks
you always
remember how hard it was to collect those first fifty or 100 followers
on twitter or fans on facebook? When I first opened up my
first Twitter account 4 years ago It took me 2 hard months to get
500 followers on Twitter and just like my friend I didn't have a very clear idea on who to follow either.
Obviously there is no universal formula to achieve this, but we can follow a certain logic to help .
The first step would be to ask yourselves this question:
Do you really
need
Twitter for your business? This is a crucial question, but at the same
time it ain't hard to figure out; if your aim is to be updated with
daily world economic news you should definitely follow "Twitterers"
specialized in this field, if you're a sports fan you should follow a
sports channel because of their daily sports updates, if you are looking
for motivation follow those who are often "twittering" about coaching,
if you want to stay updated with the latest online marketing tips and
the latest social media news follow one of the infinite "twitterers"
that talk about social media news and tools like us
addfollowers_us, and so on until you really find your interest.
Once you have a more clear idea and a purpose of how you want to use Twitter or what you might expect from this
micro-blog network of information, which unfortunately is often discovered when
you've spent some time in it, you can search and follow for people by keywords, or
follow them directly looking for those engaged in a specific #hashtag that you might like too.
At first it is normal that you follow almost everyone. When I began to
use Twitter 4 years ago I use to base all my follows based only if it was a person and not company, and
I ony followed if the user had something interesting in their tweet. With the time I began changing
my criteria and up to the present I follow only based on that strict criteria:
1- I look out for people that are just on Twitter to fill out your
twitter stream with incessant affiliate links, offers and deals. You can
easily identify these spammers by verifying their entire number of
tweets and quickly verifying their timeline at a glance. (Avoid these
users as they will not bring anything useful to your stream with the
exception of a couple of Jcpenney cheap ass offers.. )
2- As explained in the beginning of the post, look and only follow
those persons that are 100% involved in the same things and
subject-matters you like. Don't be following people because of their
nice looking faces and avatars, remember that if the person does not
know anything of what you tweet about and you're not familiar with their
niches it's better off to just to run out of there.
I always say that each individual user/person should have a clear
criteria when it comes to the hour of following or unfollowing someone,
and
will be more or less valid based on your needs or if you are looking
for information on a very concrete subject. The most important factors
tend to be; following based on the twitter stream or based on their
description. The image on a Twitter profile is one thing that usually
influences a lot at the time of deciding to follow someone, either
because they have the Twitter "egg" as an avatar or an out of place
picture, but i would not consider it an important factor to find people
to
follow. In the end, the avatar and the description are your letter
of introduction on Twitter, so watch out and don't start following
people who won't give you anything only because they have a pretty face
and or a nice a#$ photo.
When you're already clear of what type of
information you expect to receive from Twitter, you
can find more people with the same concerns through the recommendations
of Twitter.
Twitter is a great tool to stay informed
and in contact with real people in your industry, niche or your related
interests. The key to success in Twitter, I believe, is the people that you follow, so
remember that the steps to follow are: search, localize and follow.
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@addfollowers_us