A friend of mine and business owner just got onto Twitter, and as she looked across the empty Twitterverse, she sent me this message, “I’m here. Now what?” My recommendation to new Twitterers is to start following others. This begs the questions: Who do I follow? and How do I find them?
Who to Follow on Twitter
There are basically three groups of people and organizations/businesses I would follow on Twitter:
- Others in your business – You can benefit from ideas they are sharing.
- People who can help you grow – If you have a knowledge or skills gap, then follow individuals who help you fill the gap.
- Potential clients – Follow people with whom you would like to do business.
Where to Find People to Follow
Perhaps the best place to start to find people and businesses to follow on Twitter is with Twitter’s search feature.
Open a browser and go to https://twitter.com/search-home. Twitter has a list of search operators, and you can access them from the Twitter search page.
With these search operators, you can find almost anything.
Begin by typing a phrase that is related to your business, for example, massage. As you look through the result list, if you find someone you want to follow then pass your cursor over their name and a little box will appear. Within this box is a button for following the individual, click on this button.
If you are looking for individuals in your town, simply enter a search query similar to this one: near:02917. This will pull up everyone tweeting near Smithfield, RI. If I wanted to find everyone who was complaining of soreness near Smithfield, RI, I would type in sore near:02917. You could them reach out to them with a suggestion of where to get a massage.
If you were interested in following the proceedings of a conference, you could find their hashtag and follow that. For example, I am planning on attending the 2016 ATD conference, I would, therefore, follow #atd2016. The conference is not until May and there is already traffic. I would then follow people who add to my quality of life.
In a future post, I will show you tools to help make the process easier.
