Who Should You Follow on Twitter?
With millions of people to pick from, deciding who you should follow is no small task. Twitter blogged about discovering who to follow, and I recommend you read it before continuing this post.
Additional Sources for Follows: Journalists
Many columnists and reporters now post to Twitter throughout the day. The blog Journalistics provides a handy listing of sites that list journalists who use Twitter.
The publications and shows for which these journalists work also post tweets of interest. Refer to WeFollow.com for the top and local listings.
WeFollow.com is a directory where you can add yourself and select five keywords (hashtags) that define who you are. The site also provides major category directories of Twitter people ranked by the number of followers each has. This is a quick way to find top leaders in many fields, and a way for you to be found by others.
Add yourself to be easily found by others searching for Twitter people on your topics.
Look through your favorite news sources and you can find the publication’s user name or the reporter’s user name. You can also search for them by name on Twitter.
Don’t expect to be followed in return by each of these since they have huge followings – hundreds of thousands of people at times – so it’s not feasible for them to follow every one in return. That means you won’t be able to send a direct message to the person.
Now you can tweet at the user to share your opinions or feedback on stories.
Many news organizations are using this technique also to source information from their audiences to enrich their stories.
With shrinking budgets in news organizations, this substitute method of information gathering can provide a vital link that keeps viewers and readers informed through on-the-spot sources in real time.
Additional Sources for Follows: Twitter Directories
As with all popular sites, related sites appear on the scene to attract traffic and provide unique value.
MrTweet.com is another source for Twitter follows.
MrTweet examines your tweet history, followers, and follows to recommend others with similar activity.
While you will need to accumulate some followers and follows after you have been tweeting for a while to get the best results, the service is a good one to revisit periodically.
Be sure to follow @MrTweet, too, for tweets directed at you about new suggested follows.
These tools are free. Bookmark them and revisit every other month to expand your Twitter network.
When You Get a New Follower
Since Twitter is driven by content and influence, you need to demonstrate both at each opportunity.
When you get a new follower, send a reply “thank you” so that your current followers see who is following you. For example:
@bobthompson Thanks for the great speech last night and the follow!
Don’t thank the person through a direct message. You want to share with others who else follows you.
This is a viral technique to get one another’s followers to follow the two of you as well. Why? Because your follower thinks:
“If David Doe is following Jane McDoe now, then I bet David’s tweets are great like Jane’s. I will follow him, too.”
While some of this sounds like you are gaming the system to increase your follow count, that is not the purpose of these techniques. Your goal is to attract a quality network of people you can share with and influence.
If any of this strikes you as bragging or showing off, remember that the rules of engagement and standards for behavior are different in the world of Twitter. These are accepted norms and not actions that are viewed in poor taste.
How to Be of Value
The best contribution you can make is to answer questions posted by others. Similar to how the best and most popular news articles bubble to the surface based on how many people are sharing links to them on Twitter, the best answers to questions tend to bubble up, too.
These phenomena happen because we trust others in our networks more than information sources we do not know or trust as well.
A plumber may label himself “Five-Star Jim’s Plumbing” in a yellow pages ad, but does he really offer five-star service? I prefer to ask my neighbor who did the best job for him when he’s used plumbers in the past.
Word of mouth provides that unconscious third-party endorsement we like to find as a way to validate our choices.