Who Do you Follow?

Getting followers on Twitter (http://twitter.com) is relatively easy, but what is really important in making Twitter a worthwhile experience is the type of followers you get - and the type of "Twitterers" you yourself follow. In the 3rd quarter of 2008, I was resting solidly at 70 followers, and had grown to that level after several months (I joined in January 08).

I decided then that Twitter could really be a good tool for me, but I did realize that in order to beef up my presence, I would need to increase the number of people I was following, rather than keep my up-until-then more "passive" approach to attracting followers - listing my Twitter account link in my email signature. I had watched other users randomly follow, follow, follow, getting quickly to one of the Twitter follow limits of 2000. Sure, they did get some follow-backs, and had hundreds more followers than my 70, but to me, it seemed like a "quantity over quality" sort of following that would not add value in either direction.

So I set out to follow people in areas specifically of interest to me, so that when I read their Tweets in my friends' timeline, I would get information relevant to me, both professionally and personally. First, I made a list of keywords. Here are a few of the ones I listed for my professional interests: Creative, Web, Design, Entrepreneur, Social Media, Online, Blog, Blogging, PR, journalism...all in all, I listed about 25 or so. Personally, I am interested in progressive politics, wine, dogs, animal rights, and restaurants, so I made a list of words in those areas. Finally, I was interested to connect with "Tweeple" in certain geographic areas: New York City, San Francisco, South Florida (Miami, Miami Beach, Ft. Lauderdale), Toronto, Vancouver, Washington DC, etc. Onto the list they went. When my list was complete, I utilized two tools to connect with these types of folk: The Twitter search feature (http://search.twitter.com) and Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com).

The Twitter Search tool is amazing; you can search by a single keyword, but what is really helpful is the Advanced Search option. I highly recommend it. I found the Twitter Grader helpful to keep an eye on my ranking compared to other users, but what was very helpful to me was the recommendations of people to follow at the bottom of my "stats." Some were not relevant, or didn't have a high enough ranking themselves, but with each "refresh" I found at the very least one person that would be a good "follow fit" for me.
In a few short months, I not only went from a solid plateau of 70 to almost 1000 followers (maybe it will hit the big milestone by the time this goes online!), but - even more important - the tweets in my friend feed are completely customized to my personal and professional interests. To me, that is the biggest part of what makes Twitter such an incredible tool.