TwitNine

Somehow, social networking has turned into a “who-can-have-the-most-friends” contest. It started with MySpace. Some users would see someone with 15,000 followers and somehow feel that their 200 followers was completely worthless.

These sites, that were set up as social networking sites, suddenly became a popularity contest. The actual “networking” part has somehow got lost along the way.

Don't follow people like this!

Twitter gurus make the observation that the number of followers you have on Twitter correlates with the quality and value of information that you’re putting out there. For example, if you’re following 1,000 people and somehow 800 of those people follow you back, then it doesn’t really mean anything. But, if 800 people started following you of their own accord, while you are only following 100 people that you are interested in, then it shows that people are interested in you. People are following you because of what you have to offer – not because you followed them first.

I think the golden rule of successful Twitter networking is this: Only follow people who you find interesting and valuable – follow them if you would talk to them in real life.

You do not have to follow everyone that you come across!

Follow these guidelines before you click the “follow” button:

1. Don’t follow out of sympathy. “Poor guy, has no description, no website, 4 tweets and is following 2,000 people. I’ll follow him back”. NO. Following someone because they followed you is very silly – especially if it’s someone with no picture, description, etc. I mean, seriously, what on earth has this person got to offer you? Look back to the golden rule: Only follow people back if you find them interesting.

2. I would pay you for updates. Sometimes it’s good to consider whether or not you would pay to follow a person before you click the follow button. Would you pay $0.25 for their tweets? If so, then sure, go ahead and follow them. If you are following 10,000 people, then that’s $2,500. Somehow I doubt that you would be willing to fork out that amount of money to sort through people’s Tweets.

3. Twitter spring cleaning. Sometimes it’s good to go through our contact lists and do a quick cull to remove the riff-raff. The first thing to do is turn off auto-follow. Then use Twitter Karma to clean up your contact list. This tool shows who you follow who is following you back. This is a great way to delete people that you followed hoping that they would follow you back – who never did. Twitoria is also a great tool as it shows you which of your contacts are inactive.

The moral of the story is to follow people who you would actually want to talk to in the real world. This way, you can use Twitter to really engage with your followers and learn about the people who you follow and who are following you. It’s one of the best ways to raise your quality and value on Twitter and to bring your own personality to the online world.

Twitter seems to have come out of nowhere and caught the world by storm with millions upon millions of users. With 140 characters you are able to tell your followers basically anything that you want from what you had to lunch to what you are working on at the moment. Twitter is an essential part of any website and in order to compete you need to understand the basic guidelines

Twitter Followers – Right now you need to decide what you are going to use Twitter for as it will dictate the type of followers you want. If you are just interested in conversing with a large number of people than it is fine if you follow everyone and anyone. However if your Twitter is for business than you need to be a lot more selective. There are a number of Twitter management tools that will enable you to put forward a Twitter search as specific as a user who lives in a Waco Texas who is interested in making money online. If you are using Twitter for business than make sure your follower group is full of potential customers

Spamming Fellow Tweeters – Spam is not appreciated anywhere on the web so if you continuously run tweets that are trying to sell something your followers will not be following you for very long. I personally try to use a one in ten or even a two in ten where the majority of my links are interesting news and the others are specific to the product I am trying to promote. The last thing that you want is all of your Twitter posts to sound the same.

3. Cold Selling Does Not Work – If you are thinking I am going to get 10,000 Twitter followers and than bombard them with sales messages which will lead to a massive increase in my bank account I hate to break it to you but this will not work. A bazillion different reasons but the main two being the economy is still struggling and people have become much more blind to ads. Twitter is like anything else you need to back up what you say and when your competing against so many other people your Tweets need to stand out to get attention.

4. Time – It takes a lot of time to build up a loyal list of followers and many website owners for whatever the reason count on Twitter as their only promotional tool which is a mistake. Twitter can pay off huge but it is dangerous to put all of your eggs in one basket.

In closing Twitter is an explosive tool that shows know sign of slowing down but it is essential that you realize from the start what your main objective is to using this powerful tool. Build up your Twitter followers, nurture the relationships and create a strong social network are the key areas to keep in mind.

Twitter is a very receptive environment for forging connections with new friends and contacts, so amassing a list of followers is relatively simple. Typically, you gain followers in the natural course of using Twitter, but here are a few guidelines to follow:

Be real: Being genuine goes a long way, and you’re likely to gain followers
without even trying.

Be interesting: You don’t have to fascinate with every tweet you type, but do try to tweet about things more relevant to the world at large than what you just ate for lunch or the heinous traffic on your morning commute. Talk about your interests, instead. Talk about what’s in the news. Or talk about what you think should be in the news.

Be involved: The more “into” a topic you are, the more people will respond to your enthusiasm. Say that you’re really into classic cars —don’t talk just about your own fascination with them, but try to help other people on Twitter who might have questions on the subject. Get
into heated conversations and debates, too. Without being too authoritative, position yourself as someone who has some valuable information on your chosen issue to see an increase in your number of followers.

If you’re lucky enough that @Oprah posts a tweet with your @username in it — usually after you @Oprah her, and she notices and responds — you’re going to be barraged by new followers who’ve seen your username in connection with that famous person’s. But the most popular Twitter users have hundreds of thousands of followers and hundreds of people @replying to them, so don’t count on a response from a famous twitterer as a way to get your foot in the door when it comes to Twitter influence.

Some Twitter users try to lure followers by offering contests, giveaways, or other incentives to reach certain pseudo-milestones, such as number of tweets or number of followers. This approach is a little bit cheesy and can look like you’re desperate for new followers. In our opinion, you can have a better time on Twitter if you just allow your network to grow organically.

Regardless of how you get people to follow you, make sure to keep your Twitter interactions genuine. What you post on Twitter and contribute to the conversation, along with your ability to listen, determines your authority more than any follower count ever could.

Twitter is a very receptive environment for forging connections with new friends and contacts, so amassing a list of followers is relatively simple. Typically, you gain followers in the natural course of using Twitter, but here are a few guidelines to follow:

Be real:Being genuine goes a long way, and you’re likely to gain followers without even trying.

Be interesting: You don’t have to fascinate with every tweet you type,but do try to tweet about things more relevant to the world at large than what you just ate for lunch or the heinous traffic on your morning commute.Talk about your interests, instead. Talk about what’s in the news.Or talk about what you think should be in the news.

Be involved:The more “into” a topic you are, the more people will
respond to your enthusiasm. Say that you’re really into classic cars don’t talk just about your own fascination with them, but try to help other people on Twitter who might have questions on the subject. Get into heated conversations and debates, too. Without being too authoritative, position yourself as someone who has some valuable information
on your chosen issue to see an increase in your number of followers.

TIP:Plenty of influential people use Twitter, from celebrities like Ashton Kutcher(@aplusk) and Britney Spears (@britneyspears) to politicians like Democratic Congresswoman Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) and dozens more. Heck, now that Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) tweets, it’s almost proofenough in and of itself just to mention her.

If you’re lucky enough that @Oprah posts a tweet with your @username in it usually after you @Oprah her, and she notices and responds you’re going to be barraged by new followers who’ve seen your username in connection with that famous person’s. But the most popular Twitter users have hundreds of thousands of followers and hundreds of people @replying to them, so don’t count on a response from a famous twitterer as a way to get your foot in the door when it comes to Twitter influence.

Some Twitter users try to lure followers by offering contests, giveaways, or other incentives to reach certain pseudo-milestones, such as number of tweets or number of followers. This approach is a little bit cheesy and can look like you’re desperate for new followers. In our opinion, you can have a better time on Twitter if you just allow your network to grow organically.

Regardless of how you get people to follow you, make sure to keep your Twitter interactions genuine. What you post on Twitter and contribute to the conversation, along with your ability to listen, determines your authority more than any follower count ever could.

We can’t stress the importance of listening enough. The more you listen and hear what people have to say, and then respond thoughtfully, the more you can find out about people and the more well-rounded your experience (and the experience of your followers) becomes. Listening is the golden ticket of Twitter make sure to do it every day that you log in. And log in often.