Try to say that title one time fast (yeah, don't even bother with three times fast)! Phew!
Why the alliteration? Well I recently signed up for Twitter a few months ago to see what it was all about, and it wasn’t until I understood the power of it that I began to really dive in. After a month or so, I began to get frustrated because I wanted to find people to follow, but not just anyone. I wanted to follow those who had something to say or those who I could potentially build a professional relationship. So naturally I turned to Google to solve my conundrum. My results? Well, that's what I'm hoping to share here in this blog post. Here's a list of tools that helped me.
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Twitter Search – I used Twitter Search to see if anyone I knew was on Twitter. You can also use it to find a conversation about a particular topic. Great to use when you're just getting started.
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Twellow – Twellow is definitely not the prettiest tool to use, but it contains a massive database of users that you can search by location or category. Great tool, just a bit clunky.
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LocalTweeps – Local Tweeps is fairly new. However, the database is growing and the main focus of this is to find Tweeps (Twitter people) that are in the same locale as you. I found quite a few people to follow using this tool.
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WhoShouldIFollow – Who Should Follow is an interesting site, you enter your Twitter name and it finds users that match what you have tweeted, your bio, and who you are already following. This tool didn't help me as much because lately my focus has been finding people in my locale because I just moved to the area.
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TwitterLocal – Twitter Local is an Adobe Air application that is great. Basically you follow conversations that happen in specific areas - based on city, zip code, state, etc. It's great to see what is going on locally and to see who the big players are in the area.
Each of these tools helped me find more people to follow.
Other Helpful Hints -
It's also a good idea to see who the people you are following, who they themselves are following. Typically they are interested in the same people, so it's always good to check that out. Also, one of my favorite things to do is to check out the twitter user's ration. What's the ratio of who they follow to how many people follow them. I like to make sure its kind of close, however, if you are following a celebrity or a group or company, you cannot expect the ratio to be close. In addition, I also tend not to follow people without avatars, or a few quality updates. I do a quick twitter history check to verify quality and not just quantity. Sometimes those with quantity lack conciseness and worthwhile tweets.
These are just a few things to look out for when you are looking for more people to follow. Hope this helps and happy tweeting.
Feel Free to follow me @Phamtastik and Lindsey @lindseyrobbins