Who and why do I follow on Twitter...

Until a few weeks ago I had an auto-follow set-up, and I would randomly check and weed-out from these auto-follows. (Auto-follow is offered by many twitter apps and what it does is blindly follow those who follow you)

Then one day I decided to get off it and see what happens. I had chosen to auto-follow not because I was trying to get more followers but because I was lazy. So it was easy to get off that wagon. Ok, not that easy :)

Now that am going to choose who to follow manually, I’ve been giving some thought to what am looking for when following people.

This makes a huge difference I have realized, following authentic people helps connect better, prevents spam and on the whole makes twitter a much better experience.

Here are the things I am going to look out for, (did I miss something, pls add-in).

1. A photo – of a person and not some inanimate object. It so much better to know people by face rather than just an ‘@’ ID.
2. A bio – Helps me get to know the person and also understand what they are about.
3. Last tweet – I want to follow active people, if someone hasn’t posted for more than 3 months – hey! Whats the point.
4. Non-Spammers – I am sick of those spammy direct messages.
5. No-Bots – No place here for robots. I don’t care and don’t want to hear what they say.
6. Connectors – Most importantly people who connect with me or talk to me… People who want to genuinely be friends and not just hit on me…

What do you look for on twitter? Why do you connect with or follow tweeple?

Photo Credit - www.bijusubhash.com

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Using Twitter for promotion – Part 1: Imagine Twitter to be a newspaper…

It's not about what you are doing or what you want… Promotion done right is about what your audience wants and needs.

A couple of days earlier a friend asked me how he could use twitter to promote himself and his work. Our long discussion motivated me to write a series about twitter and how to use it right. With no further delay, here's the first…

Imagine a newspaper. It has headlines, news pieces, editorial, advertisements, etc. All of this gets divided into local, regional, national and international. Another way it gets split is politics, entertainment, sports, finance, etc. There are a lot of sub-divisions in one newspaper.

If you walked down your street in the morning you would see different newspapers lying at your neighbours doorsteps. There are a large variety of newspapers available and people choose their paper based on the kind of news and reporting they are interested in.

Do you see how twitter is like a newspaper? – Its has 140 character headlines with links to more, a variety of tweets depending on the persons interest, self and other advertising and followers who can choose tweeple to follow depending on interest.

So how does a newspaper decide what news they would run and how they would report it? And how do you think they could increase their readership? Newspapers choose news based on the areas they have experts in and what their audience wants. But if they want to increase their viewership they first need to look into what kind of readers they want. After deciding the target audience they need to find out what their new audience wants and deliver.

Twitter works similarly; if you want more followers you need to first list out the kind of audience you want for yourself and your work. Then research the interests of your audience using a tool like Twitter Search to understand their needs.

Now that you know what information to provide to capture interest and give people a reason to follow you, remember that too much information can also turn people off. So my next topic in this series is how much to tweet and how to balance it.

So what do you relate twitter to?

Photo Credit: Xeni

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