Twitter – Whom to Follow, How Many to Follow, Why Follow?

Twitter – Whom to Follow, How Many to Follow, Why Follow?
By Kathryn Lively

You may see the tiny buttons bearing images of chubby blue birds. Follow me on Twitter, everybody implores. Receive multiple updates a day from favorite sites and bloggers in 140-character (or shorter) increments, maybe check out a link or two to a viral video or breaking news. These days just about everybody is using Twitter to relay information for one purpose or another – celebrities, news and media, and even the Oval Office. With so many options on this social network, not to mention the activity you contribute, you may wonder exactly who is worth following, and why.

Whom to Follow

First things first, consider why you have signed up for Twitter in the first place? What is your intent? Is it a means of reading news, communicating with friends, with potential customers and clients, or a combination of all these things? If you have specific interests, like publishing or sports, you may be inclined to subscribe to the feeds of regional or national media outlets. If you search diligently enough, you’ll find there are specialized Twitter profiles for a variety of topics – stocks quotes, wine collecting, dog breeding…anything at all.

Bearing this in mind, if your plan is to follow hundreds on hundreds of users with the hopes they will reciprocate, you may be in for a shock. Twitter etiquette doesn’t necessarily dictate that one must oblige a new follower by returning the favor, so the next time you open your reader to find a glut of messages that don’t necessarily interest you, you’ll realize others may have felt the same way about your posts.

To build a Twitter feed and eventually a readership of your own, it’s best to approach the micro-blogging tool naturally. Post at will as you normally would with a blog. Talk about your products, your services, other aspects of your life and business without hard-selling, and you may find people will discover you on their own. Likewise, be choosy with whom you follow. Don’t feel obliged to follow an account for mutual benefit.

How Many to Follow

This question ties in with the previous one. If you feel it necessary to follow a mass number of people to gain readership, bear in mind that the more people you add to your roster, the more diluted your feed becomes. If there is a core group of Twitter accounts you enjoy reading on a daily basis, their messages could get lost in a sea of unrelated posts that are there only because you want readers of your own. In theory, it isn’t a healthy way to maintain your social profile – the more you approach Twitter from a natural viewpoint, the better you will be able to enjoy your experience.

Why Follow

Why do you read certain blogs, certain Web sites? You enjoy the content, of course. So should this principle apply to Twitter. You don’t have to feel pressured to follow a particular celebrity because he/she is THE person on Twitter to read – follow users who provide the insight and information you want. While Twitter is a valuable tool in self-promotion and social media optimization, it doesn’t have to be work. Enjoy yourself, and the “tweets” of users you want to read.

In short, follow only whom you wish to follow, post what’s on your mind, interact, and grow your readership from there.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on professional SEO writing services and travel writing services.

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