VideoGood news. I don’t obsess over my 353 feeds anymore.
Bad news. Now I just skim them to get material for my latest obsession, Twitter.
As of now, 2,398 wonderful people follow me. Each day I look for more people to follow. Each day I unfollow unfollowers.
Why are so many people following me?
- They want me to follow them.
- I contribute often and try to not be annoying.
- I follow lots of new people every day.
Why use Twitter?
Because we all need help. People make the world go around. If you could aggregate a bunch of their thoughts with Twitter, they can offer news, advice, work, interaction. Valuable stuff.
It’s not stalking, it’s crowdsourcing.
No one is making you put in your real name and address. No one is making you post your GPS location or say what you are eating.
Use good judgment. Try to say something helpful or witty. That’s it.
Ask a question to your followers, start conversations. People are diverse and interesting. Go for it.
I asked about which monitor to buy, about Explorer emulation software, about cruises to go on. Got good feedback each time. Answers improve as your follower count grows and diversifies.
That doesn’t work if you’re following 300 people that don’t follow you back. Unfollow those jerks and find people who want to gain from you.
Use prior obsession for retweet material.
Getting retweeted leads to more followers. My RSS feeds’ high PostRank-ed stories about web design, Obama, and especially Twitter itself have great rewteet potential. Post stuff people will want to share with their followers without looking like an ass.
People don’t retweet posts about what you are eating or how you are feeling. Just sayin.
Follow everyone.
Find new local (somewhat) tweeters with:
http://twitsnear.me/
http://www.twitterlocal.net/
http://nearbytweets.com/
Find any tweeter by keyword at:
And of course, follow people who follow you.
Unfollow people who don’t follow back.
If they don’t follow back within a couple days, screw them. Unfollow. Done. Move on. Nothing personal. It’s a two way street, bitch.
Tweeter following is not like subscribing to a feed. You’re not getting the full benefit of crowd sourcing if you only follow a few people and never tweet value.
Unfollow spammers.
There is a growing number of people scheming Twitter. Dump those noisy annoying jerks who post the same scheming crap over and over. Don’t give them the benefit of your numbers.
Get the news.
These sites keep track of trends on Twitter:
If it isn’t a good source of details and facts, it’s at least a good “heads up”.
Group your followers.
Getting noisy? Use a Twitter app that can group people, like TweetDeck. That is a great way to listen to the ones you want to pay special attention to. When I have a conversation with people, I put them into the group I made for everyone I’ve had a conversation with. The extra attention those special 40 or so people will benefit everyone.
Wow, there are lots of Twitter tools.
A Twitter Mini-Guide: 60+ Useful Twitter Resources
Twittermania: 140+ More Twitter Tools!
What now.
Follow me on Twitter. I’ll follow back.
Tags: crowdsourcing, following, retweet, twitter
I’ve never thought to unfollow people who don’t follow me back! Makes sense.
Although I have found that some people I follow will follow me back a few weeks later… I guess they check back to see if they’re into my tweets (they could have just checked my history!)
That’s the point! My family always asks me why I spend so much time lokking around in the net. Well, it’s a great waste of time so far, you discover a lot, people are crossing my virtual way, and it feels like family. I’m a Twitter novice, checked in since about 2 weeks or so. Due to that the number of followers and following people is still manageable, but increasing every day. And it (in a special way) feels good. The sense of the net is to communicate, to discover, to share and to discover. I placed some of my photographies in stock databases and even sold some of them. Then I switched to free communities but some folks tried to annoy others there by posting bad ratings without explaining why. So I opened my very own Blog in January ‘09, the pix are hosted by Flickr with a neat CC-Licence. I give them away for free. That’s the real point: Sharing, bringing together, and feeling good with what you do. THX 4 this posting!!!
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That’s a nice and insightful post describing your approach to Twitter. I think it is great to tell people where you are at. I also like the list of tools you mention.
There are too many for me to remember but if I come across the same name a number of times I’ll start using them
Thanks again for sharing.
Outstanding! Thank you for these wonderful tips.