Whats Twitter?

If you have been asking the question Whats Twitter?  Then ask no more, I have the answer for you!

It can be very daunting when you get all hyped up about joining Twitter and how it’s going to do great things for your business as you have heard lots of other business owners tell you that they are getting great results from it and how addictive it is.  You create your profile, full of enthusiasm and then when you press save, are then faced with a blank page.  No followers, no feed, no nothing!

So where do you find followers?

Well there are followers and there are quality followers!  The difference is that some of those who follow you will be interested in what you have to say and will be willing to interact with you, others will just want to sell to you and are only using Twitter as a sales tool.  When you start using Twitter, it is advisable to use the Twitter community to it’s full advantage and that means getting interactive.  Follow people, reply to tweets, retweet (RT) tweets of interest and send out useful information amongst your sales and promotional tweets.

There are a few Twitter directories where you can make a start looking for followers.  Not every person that you follow will follow you back, and please don’t take offense at this, as everyone has a different Twitter strategy they are using, don’t take it personally.  If someone starts following you, and you are not following them, then check out their Twitter profile and see whether they are someone you would like to get to know better or they offer great information and start following them back.  You will most likely find that if you don’t follow someone back, after a period of time they will unfollow you.  Again don’t take it personally.

The best places to start looking for people to follow are:

Twellow – A yellow pages of Twitter users.  Feel free to add yourself in here, it should happen automatically but as the number of people joining Twitter each day increases, you might beat them to it!  If you are added automatically to Twellow, they will put you in the categories that most resemble what you have entered in your Twitter bio, so think about what you put in here carefully.

Twittgroups – There are lots of groups on Twitter, you will recognise them by their use of a hashtag # against a word or phrase.  To join, go to the site and join a few groups that relate to your business and/or hobbies and join in their Twitter community.

Twitter, although its termed a micro-blogging site, it’s more like instant messaging on a large scale!  Where all the Twitter messages (tweets) from the people you are following flow into one feed and show up on your Twitter homepage.  Once you start following lots of tweeters it will be hard to keep up with everyone’s tweets, and the good thing is – you don’t have to!  Just reply to those that take your interest when you go to the Twitter site and remember not to get too addicted!