Best Twitter practices

[Multiple Sarcasms]

Can we build a thread with suggestions for best Twitter practices especially in regard to building a following?

Creating interesting and regularly updated content is a given but what are the secrets that can help you launch a Twitter account in the early days when the numbers are low?

Does it come down to a simple quid pro quo numbers game - you follow me and I'll follow you? That becomes a problem with the 2,000 'following' limit.

What practices have you found to work best when working to build up a Twitter following?

[Medievalist]

Don't think about it in terms of following numbers.

Think about it in terms of content. Provide interesting tweets. RT with an @ interesting tweets. Interact with people you follow.

Participate in the culture--RT and FollowFriday and hash tags.

[Celia Cyanide]

Can you explain Follow Friday to me? I don't really get it. I am doing my best to find my way around Twitter, but it's all new to me.

[tjwriter]

What Medi said.

It's not just about numbers, it's about making connections with people. You have to interact and have conversations. If you don't, people aren't going to care about your content.

Celia, Follow Friday is where people list some of their favorite people to follow. You can check out who the people you are following are following because someone thinks they are interesting.

It's the equivalent of your friend x saying, "My friend Z is always so funny and has the wackiest stories. You should check out Z."

[Celia Cyanide]

So you're just supposed to pick interesting people?

[Old Hack]

Here's a useful blog post about Twitter, from the wonderful Nicola Morgan. (http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/2009/10/twittering-is-not-just-for-birds.html)

I hope it's a help.

[tjwriter]

You could do some of your favorite writers for FF. Or some of your favorite authors. Or some other topic. Or just randomly pick some of your favorite people.

It's just supposed to be about sharing, I guess.

[Celia Cyanide]

Thank you. Some people have #ff'ed me, and I'm not sure what it means! Now if people see that and follow me, I'll be under all this pressure to be interesting! AAAHHHHH!!!!

[Toothpaste]

Follow Friday isn't a rule though. Remember you are under no obligation to do anything you don't want to on Twitter.

Oh and just because someone recommends you, doesn't mean people will follow you. It usually happens, but don't think that all of a sudden everyone is going to start bugging you, Follow Friday is a recommendation, not an order :) . Unless someone like Ashton Kutcher recommends you. Then . . . well then that will be overwhelming.

[katiemac]

Also, the search function is your best friend.

[mommyjo2]

Interesting or quirky tweets with hashtags.

[Polenth]

I tweet stuff and follow interesting people. If someone follows me and they look interesting, I follow them back. There isn't really a trick to it apart from that. Most of these get-followers-quick schemes make you look bad and don't work.

Things that put me off following someone:

- Too many links, no matter how relevant.
- Too much self promotion. Many people put links to their blogs and that's fine... but you don't want to be talking about it every other tweet.
- No replies or retweets.
- Following then unfollowing if I follow back.
- Unfollowing if I don't follow back within 24 hours (or similar).
- Getting into arguments with people all the time.
- No profile picture or description.

[SouthernFriedJulie]

I tweet stuff and follow interesting people. If someone follows me and they look interesting, I follow them back. There isn't really a trick to it apart from that. Most of these get-followers-quick schemes make you look bad and don't work.

Things that put me off following someone:

- Too many links, no matter how relevant.
- Too much self promotion. Many people put links to their blogs and that's fine... but you don't want to be talking about it every other tweet.
- No replies or retweets.
- Following then unfollowing if I follow back.
- Unfollowing if I don't follow back within 24 hours (or similar).
- Getting into arguments with people all the time.
- No profile picture or description.

Don't forget Auto-DMs. I hate those. People follow you, then you follow back on to get an auto-dm that thanks you for following and to just click their link.

Bleh.

I go through my followers and cull them all the time. I don't care if I know the person off Twitter or not, if all I ever see is link after link with no conversation-poof- blocked.

Nothing but quotes drives me nuts, too. If someone is going to network, they should have the decency to share some of their real self.

[veinglory]

I follow people who twitter things I want to know and actually read pretty much anything they post. I think blind reciprocal following often means a lot of those people will never even look at your tweets. It's like the audience equivalent of empty calories.

[veinglory]

p.s. I often look at a profile's following-to-follower ratio rather than absolute numbers, to try and predict the usefulness of their tweets.

[Medievalist]

Seriously, like with most things on the Web and community, it has to do with content, creating good content, pointing to good content, and responding to good content.

[katiemac]

p.s. I often look at a profile's following-to-follower ratio rather than absolute numbers, to try and predict the usefulness of their tweets.

I do this, too.

[stldenise]

Do you guys use tweet deck? I lost interest in twitter a while back but my account is living some kind of phantom life without me. I set up some automatic crap that sends out notices when I post on Examiner, and another one that auto follows. BUT now I can't remember what program I used! AND I'm pretty sure I changed my mind on the auto follow right after setting it up, but it seems to be working without me. Gag.

I'd like to revive my twitter presence. Any advice - besides tracking down the auto follow software and shutting it down?

And I never really figured out the hashtag thing. How do you find a hashtag that relates to something you're interested in?

[veinglory]

I use tweetdeck. I only follow the number of people that I can easily read on the deck.

[mommyjo2]

I love Tweetdeck. The few times I have to sign into my actual twitter account to follow someone, I miss my deck!

[mommyjo2]

In tweetdeck you can make a column with a search field with hashtags, so you can have multiple columns following a tag.

[nancy sv]

p.s. I often look at a profile's following-to-follower ratio rather than absolute numbers, to try and predict the usefulness of their tweets.

I don't get this. How do you use that ratio to figure out anything about their posts?

[mommyjo2]

Well, if they are following a crazy amount of people (like thousands) or if follow more people than follow them, it's a warning signal.

Really good, interesting, or famous tweeps will have far more followers that people they follow.

[tjwriter]

I follow a few more people than follow me, but I'm not as active as I could be either.

[veinglory]

If a person follows you, but you don't follow them, that suggests you have content that is worth seeing for its own sake.

[SouthernFriedJulie]

If a person follows you, but you don't follow them, that suggests you have content that is worth seeing for its own sake.

Unless they're being followed by a ton of marketers or other people that use an auto-follow platform.

If I hadn't cleaned out my followers every week for months, I'd have more than a thousand followers based on that alone.

For your formula to work, the person doing the investigating must remember to check the followers of the person in question to be sure they're just not too lazy to remove B.S. tweeple.

[veinglory]

It is a general thing I have noticed, and is working in practice. I don't know how wide spread autofollowers are, I have yet to see one--what is the point of it?

[Polenth]

Unless they're being followed by a ton of marketers or other people that use an auto-follow platform.

If I hadn't cleaned out my followers every week for months, I'd have more than a thousand followers based on that alone.

For your formula to work, the person doing the investigating must remember to check the followers of the person in question to be sure they're just not too lazy to remove B.S. tweeple.

The spam accounts don't add much to follower numbers in the long run, because they get deleted. I don't always clear them out, but they disappear on their own.

The idea of only following people with more followers than people they're following strikes me as odd. My follower/following number is pretty even because I tend to follow real people who follow me. It's more of a reflection on how interesting the people following me are, rather than how interesting I am.

[Pepper]

I'm not too concerned about numbers. If people follow me, that's awesome. But I'm happy just twittering away regardless. It's the closest thing I've ever had to a diary.

I think the people who are following me now follow me because they actually want to read my tweets. If they didn't, then they would have "unfollowed" me when I didn't follow them back/ RT them/ FF them/ etc. And I do lose some followers because of that. Life goes on.

I have to go through my Followers list all the time to remove spammers. I'm pretty sure I have mostly real people on my list now. :D

I think the key is just to write interesting stuff regularly. If you don't tweet enough, people might not follow you. If you tweet too much, people might unfollow you because they're sick of their account being spammed with your tweets. ;)

By all means participate in trending topics and whatever other cultural things go on, but I find that this usually attracts more spammers than it does real people.