Twitter Strategy #2 – Choose Your Friends Wisely

“Twitter strategy?  Who needs a Twitter strategy? I thought Twitter was a bunch of people telling other people what they had for breakfast.”

​If you have been on Twitter a while, you may want to go do something else because this is another article that will seem really basic to you, but this is a question I get all the time.

Last time we talked about using the random method of following any and all comers to build your following on Twitter. This is another possible strategy for using Twitter to build a following of people who are interested in your product or service.

Network on Twitter only with noteworthy business associates, competitors, and peers.Do not simply friend every person you can that requests you or vice versa on Twitter. Instead, choose your networking buddies carefully. Look for fellow executives or business owners who work within your particular niche.
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Then, follow their progress, look for advice, and of course, throw in some of your own two cents as well. By befriending people who are in the same line of work as you, you’ll get an insider’s look at how their successes compare to yours.

And don’t forget to follow their followers! The people who are following them are not only executives and people in your industry looking for the like minded, they are also people who are interested in that business for other reasons.

If you are a real estate agent you don’t want your Twitter account to have only other real estate agents in it, you also want people who are trying to buy or sell their home.  If you are an insurance agent, you would rather have followers who want to buy insurance than followers who are also insurance agents. You might also want to use Twitter Search to find people in your local area by searching on “Oklahoma,” “Tulsa,” “Broken Arrow” or other search terms.

Additionally, while logged in to your Twitter account you can select “Find People” and use the tab for browsing people who have listed similar interests. Twitter also makes suggestions of people you should follow based on your own listed interests, and which people you have already followed.  The programming assumes that if you are in the same location and have people in common with someone that you may actually know them and will list them as a suggestion.