How I Use Twitter

A few months ago I posted 5 Easy Ways to get me to follow you (on Twitter). This is a sort of follow up to that post.

I connect with my followers

Twitter is a wonderful service that has allowed me to find many people who I now would consider friends. For me Twitter is a community, we have similar interests and I genuinely care about them and in most aspects what they are doing. Twitter and the people on Twitter continue to amaze me with their generosity with all the charity events going on like #saveteecycle.

I read all the tweets and click on the links

As @TheBrandBuilder tweeted: I no longer need an RSS reader. You guys are my meta filter. THIS is my RSS feed now. Which for me is very true, the individuals I follow keep me up to date with the latest and greatest blog posts, videos, and current events. I have recently unfollowed a significant amount of individuals, why would I do that? I like to read all of the tweets, I have the time and get not only enjoyment but value from them (well most of them). I was not getting what I wanted from some people I was following and the extra tweets in my timeline were making it difficult for me to keep up on everyone else's tweets. This is different from individuals I follow with now dormant accounts. I will not unfollow them, they are not posing any problems or clogging up my timeline. As well as the possibility they will come back and start tweeting again and I will be unaware of this for some time.

Others follow an army

I know some individuals following thousands of people on Twitter, nothing is wrong with that. They are not able to read or keep up on everyone's tweets but they do manage a lot more @ replies and mentions that they are able to read. I feel that these people will miss out on an awesome tweet or link. Most of the good tweets and links get retweeted anyway right, that is true but I would rather not take the chance of missing it, or being the person to RT it. Those that follow more than they can keep up with also are the ones using twitter clients to help keep up and get the important information. I use TweetDeck as my client but also use Clusterr. My previous post on Clusterr: Is the next step in Social Media Clusterr?

For me its about quality not quantity

I follow the people who provide me with entertainment, joy, and value. I don't need to follow everyone because it is popular or they are popular. I enjoy who I am following and do add others when we have a common interest or I enjoy what they tweet.

Which camp do you fall into, do you follow a few or a lot? Do you read or try to read everyones tweets or just look a few times a day? Anything else you would like to add?

5 Easy Ways to get me to follow you on Social Media (Twitter)

My followers on Twitter have been steadily increasing, mostly with spam bots and people I have no interest in following or don't know. That and my twitter time line (Twitstream) is pretty full especially when I get to it at lunch break. Usually I don't have time to read all the posts but I do click on a few of the people I follow to see what they posted. A few that I always read include Coalesce, FitMke, Tom Snyder (triveraguy), and Jim Raffel. The reason why I check these 4 before any others is they tweet great content and links about Marketing and Social Media and for Fit Milwaukee they offer great tips for running. They pertain to me and my interests and are not cluttered with a bunch of Foursquare check ins or blip songs. This list is also great suggestions for Follow Friday.

Now on to the ways for me to follow you and to get my attention

1. Follow me first- This is a basic start, but just because you are following me doesn't mean I will follow you back. I follow about 1/3 of the people who follow me mainly because I don't have time to read thousands of tweets. I also only check my followers once a week to see if I have any new followers.
2. Have a logical reason to be following me- If you are following me you should be doing so for a reason.
   A. Are in my geographic location (Milwaukee or Appleton, Wisconsin).
   B. Have a common interest whether it is video games, sports, G4, Olivia Munn (OMFG), or some other commonality.
   C. Like my awesome, witty, hilarious tweets. Which I am sorry have been lacking a lot as of late.
   D. Or most importantly are in the marketing or a similar industry.
   
3. Don't have half your tweets be from apps- I had a hard time wording this but in lament's terms don't have most of your feed be filled with foursquare check ins or similar programs (gowalla) and to a much lesser extent songs from Blip or what video you rated on youtube. Now don't get me wrong its fine to use these apps and post where you are or what you are listening to I just don't want that to be all you do or tweet about.
   
4. Have quality tweets in your timeline- This goes back to point 3 but if you are a new follow the last 20 or so of your tweets determines if I am going to follow you back. Comical tweets are great for a follow but tweets that have information and something I can learn from is best. Have a reason for me to follow you.
   
5. Have a conversation with me- Reply to one of my tweets let me know you are following me and reading what I tweet. Let me know that you exist, this is one of the main ways I follow you.

Do you have any other ways or rules for following someone? Do you agree with this list? Do you follow me on twitter? Do you have someone who I should be following?