How to build a Twitter community Locating people on Twitter..

 Chapter 4

How to build a Twitter community

The methods that you use to build your Twitter community depend on what 

you expect to get out of the community. Are you interested in casual 

communication or are you trying to build a business brand and empire? 

Once you establish why you are joining the community then establish your 

Twitter handle appropriately. Your Twitter handle is an important part of 

your personal brand; it is part of how you will gain followers and how 

people will locate you on the site. When choosing your handle, make sure 

you use your real name so that people may easily find you in the 

community. Also using your real name gives a friendlier appearance; it 

shows a willingness to share the real you.

Once you gain friends and followers on Twitter you will need to maintain 

the many communications you will have, using the tweetdeck application 

will help manage your tweets.

In the Twitter community finding people to follow is encouraged and it is the 

best way to build relationships. By searching for people with common

interests, hobbies or businesses to follow you will increase your 

community.You can use several applications to seek out people to follow 

on the site:

 Twitter search which is the only search function sponsored through Twitter.

 Twellow which is an application that is like Twitter search but you can 

search through categories.

 WeFollow which is an index of people on Twitter.

An important aspect of building your Twitter community is to learn the 

Twitter vocabulary. Frequently new words are added to the vocabulary 

used by tweeters and to have a viable Twitter experience you will need to 

know the language of the community. Some frequently used terms are:

 DM - This means direct message.

 @ - this is used to reply to a tweet and comes before the Twitter handle in

a reply.

 RT- which means retweet.

 Tweet – This means that you are sending a message on Twitter.

 Also you may see “tw” preceding many other words used on the site; these

are terms created by people.

Another way to ensure that your Twitter community continues to build is to

let others know your handle by adding it to your written works in the byline

or by adding it to your signatures.

Participation is important in social networking sites, let people know you are

around by indicating your presence with a “hello” tweet.

Getting to know your followers by reading their profile bio makes it easier to

engage in conversations and shows you are interested in your followers.

Another way to increase your community is to pass on viable information to

others and publicize your information source.

Ensure that you are following the community etiquette so that you do not

offend members of the community – you don’t want negative publicity.

It is also helpful to find out who some of the top Tweeters are and engage

in communicating with them and follow them. 

Chapter 5

Locating people on Twitter

The main focus of Twitter is to build a connection and communicate with

other people that you have something in common with. Communication is

key, but first you have to find people that you would like to establish a

conversation with. Twitter is a community that is populated by millions of

people thereby making the task of searching for interesting people to follow

and talk to a really daunting task. However, the community of Twitter offers

several ways that you can seek out desirable people.

Twitter people is the on site program that permits searching for people on

Twitter as long as they use their real name. If a person has not used their

real name or has a common name it may be difficult to sort through the

many similar search results. Also if you do not completely fill out the bio on

their profile page you will have a hard time trying to determine if your

search has revealed the person that you are actually looking for.

Tweepz is a third party site that enables you to filter your searches by

limiting the user information that you use to search for people on the site.

You can search for specifics like name, bio and location. You can also

search by the number of followers a person ahs or the number of tweets.

Tweep search gives you the ability to search for people by real name,

location or their user name and it produces a listing of all their friends and

followers.

Twitdir is another third party search engine that looks for people by name

and location.

There are also several directories available where user profiles are indexed

and placed into assorted categories. You can effectively search these

directories and obtain largely organized results.

Twellow is a directory that is considered the most detailed and accurate.

Millions of user profiles are indexed in the directory and broken up into several categories. This gives you the ability to search the total listing of

profiles or narrow down your search to a particular category.

Wefollow is a user generated directory that organizes people by using their

hashtags(#), which are used to denote keywords or topics in a tweet.

Just Tweet it is another user generated directory that contains millions of

users to search by name or location.

Twubble is a directory that works by following or “spidering”. The people

that follow the people that you are already following thereby brining you into

contact with people that you know already have similar interests.

Twitterel is a service that enables searches by keyword searches of

people’s tweets. This service will notify you when a person of interest is

found.

Who should I follow is a search service that searches for people of interest

by using your username as the basis for the search.

Mr. Tweet is a Twitter application that allows you to make

recommendations about other tweeters to follow and in turn you will receive

recommendations as well.

Chapter 6

Getting people to follow me on Twitter

When you join Twitter one of your main objectives after joining is to build

your Twitter community by getting people to follow you. You will want to

seek out and be followed by people with similar interests or hobbies. To

build up your following there are some steps that you can take to ensure

that you will get people to follow you on Twitter.

 When filling out your profile be thorough and honest, make sure to indicate

your likes, dislikes, hobbies and other areas of interests. By being thorough

with your profile information is the best way to attract people with similar

interests to follow you.

 Find people on Twitter with interests like yours and follow them; in turn they

will follow you.

 Strategically place your Twitter handle on written documents, like articles,

blogs and guest blogs.

 Invite people to “follow me” on Twitter, by stating it on your blog, website

and email correspondence.

 Include your Twitter handle on your business cards.

 Make sure to be interesting and engaging with your tweets. Also, retweet

other tweets that you find interesting.

 Share interesting articles, videos, etc by posting the url on Twitter

 When you attain followers make sure to send them a DM to thank them for

following you.

 Use “follow Fridays” to find out about people of interest from your followers

and forward people of interest to them.

 Do not “spam” people by sending out offers related to your business or with

offers for business related products. Don’t just send offers for people to join

your list of followers you need to be more engaging in your communication.

 Let other people like friends and family, that communicate with through

your regular email account that now you can talk to them on Twitter.

 Make sure you have an avatar people want to see who they are following..

 Ensure that you are updating your tweets frequently; very little activity on

your part will leave people disinterested.

 Don’t mention you are an expert in something and not tweet on a regular

basis in reference to your expertise.

 Do not tweet about the need to gain more followers; this to some people is

a turn off.

 Do not post argumentative or mean posts; people will not want to engage in

conversation with you if they think you are mean.

 Provide something to the community like a free service or some valuable

advice.

 Find the tweeters that have a great amount of influence in the community.

You can follow and engage with them and in turn they may send followers

your way as well.

 Give people a “shout out” when they do something that really helps the

community or brings great information to the community.

 Also try being entertaining don’t just send out boring tweets, you can tweet

jokes, amusing stories link to funny picture and videos as well.