Over the past few weeks I have been reading a book called Twitter Power byJoel Comm. As many of you know I am not a big fan of books, but I have to say it is one of my favorite books. Even though I already know a lot about social media it made me think about Twitter in a new way. Here are a few things I learned:
Get Started the Right Way
When I started using Twitter, I went about it the wrong way. My user name wasn’t my name and I tried to create a profile that wasn’t tied to my company or me. Because of this no one really paid attention to my Twitter profile and cared about what I tweeted. So if you are new to Twitter, make sure your profile represents you.
On top of that you need to make your profile is inviting. For example you want to use a picture of yourself and design your profile instead of just using the generic designs Twitter gives you. And when doing so make sure you take into account colors, because you don’t want it to be too distracting and causes people to ignore your tweets.
Building a Following
When you first sign up for Twitter there are two ways you can get followers. The first is the quantity route and the second is the quality route. If you go for the quantity route you can do a few things:
- Look for people you already know.
- Tweet your blog, so every time you write a blog posts it goes to Twitter. You also want to make sure your twitter profile is linked to from your blog.
- Offer your followers freebies and gifts. The more you offer to them, the more people will follow you. A good way to do this is through contests.
- Every time someone tweets you, make sure you respond to them.
- Put your Twitter name in your email signature.
If you are looking to get quality users, you can:
- Identify and follow the experts in your industry.
- Gain people’s friendship by doing things such as replying to their tweets.
- Always give more than you take by doing things such as giving other people advice and when they ask for it.
The Art of Tweeting
As you probably already know, I don’t tweet too often. I have only made a few hundred tweets in a year to 2 years. After reading Twitter Power, I finally understood how I should be tweeting.
- Follow Twitter etiquette. For example you never want to spam (which I have done), you want to give credits when retweeting, and most importantly you want to stick with 140 characters (don’t create multiple tweets to get across a message).
- You want to join the conversation. I always just tweeted what I wanted, but my profile never grew. The main reason for this is because I never joined the conversation and contributed to it.
- Make sure you are interesting on Twitter. If you want to tweet crap, that’s fine, but you will probably gain a lot more followers if you are interesting.
Conclusion
There is a lot more great information that you can learn by reading Twitter Power. I personally loved it so much that I recommend you get out there right now and buy a copy. If you don’t you will regret it!
By the way, you should also Twitter about Twitter Power. 
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