3 Lists You Should Write Before Following

Ok, so you’ve signed up, you may or may not have written a profile description (it is crucial to write this and if you haven’t, this post will help you), and you’ve uploaded a picture (please do this, no one wants to look at another egg)…now what?

You need to start following people. Who you follow is important for a couple reasons. It’s whose tweets will be streaming through your feed, and it’s also who may potentially follow you back. If you are on Twitter to promote your business, website, or blog – following people is how you can begin to gain followers yourself.

Think about why you are using Twitter and write it down. Now, start figuring out who to follow by making 3 separate lists (I suggest writing each idea on a separate line, and make them as concise as possible.) If you are going to be using Twitter to strictly promote your business and network, write these 3 lists from a business perspective. Ok, ready? Go:

List #1

Who your audience may be. Think to yourself, who would want to read my tweets? Why? If, at this time, you are only using Twitter to keep up on trending topics, stalk the tweets of your fav celeb, or some other non-engaging use – then the answer is probably no one. And that’s okay; I just hope you change your mind. If your using it to spread knowledge, gain traffic on your blog, or promote your business – think about who is and should be interested in you.

List #2

What interests you. This can be things you do, things you like, things you read, things you watch, or all things you aspire to do, like, read, watch, etc. Or it can be places you love, famous people you adore, news channels you like, magazines you peruse, etc. You get my point.

List #3

What you want to know. Everyone always needs to learn something – no one has all the answers. Make a list of anything you’d like to know more about. Is it cooking? Parenting? 18^th century literature? Social media?

Good. List #1 is the most important to people who are using Twitter to promote their business or blog, and should not be taken lightly. Take time to think in-depth about this one.

When I began my blog and subsequently my Twitter account, I decided I wanted to take a more multi-faceted approach to my Twitter persona. I didn’t just want to be @PuzzledTweeter – Some Social Media Chick Trying to Figure it Out. No, I wanted to be the other parts of myself, too.

I broadened who I followed to include people who shared my personal interests, like-minded individuals, groups I love, etc. I did follow a lot of people in the social media business – I learn a lot from them and am enjoying building relationships with them. But since my ultimate goal is to help people learn social media, wouldn’t it be silly if I followed only people in my field? Why would they necessarily need my help? My audience is huge – it can be anyone who uses social media as a tool. This is why, in addition to social media tweeps, I follow parenting groups, writers, people new to Twitter, etc.
Now I’m going to show you how to use your lists to find people to follow. Let’s say your List #2 looks something like this:

Hiking
Writing
Crafts
Music
Durango, Colorado

If that was your list, email me right now, and let’s be best friends.

Ok, pick one of your keywords, let’s do “hiking”, and type it into the search box at the top of your Twitter account. Something like this will come up:

Scroll through people and click on those who interest you. A good way to see if they are someone you’d like to follow is to read back through their tweets. If you like, follow.

Another way you can search is to add a hashtag in front of any of your keywords. Type “#hiking” into the search box. This type of search will bring up anyone who has written “#hiking” into any of their tweets. Your search will look something like this:

Again, scroll through and look for someone who interests you and follow them.

You get my drift, right? You can do this with everything you wrote down in your lists and find valuable people to follow. Here's a tip, if your goal is to gain followers: check each person’s following to follower ratio. If someone has 47,982 followers and follows 14 people – you’re probably not going to make the list. A fairly even ratio tends to indicate they will follow you back. Stay tuned for more posts on this subject.

Also, remember in the beginning how I said this post will help you write your 160 character description? You now have a couple lists that describe you and what you like. Start from there and check back with me soon on for a full post on writing those pesky "about me" boxes.