Twitter Tips: Monitor, Engage, Follow

As Twitter becomes more and more mainstream - the business benefits of Twitter become clearer.

First, a word of caution. When engaging in any social media, you want to do so authentically - it will involve a fair amount of your participation, both give and take. Your first step once you join Twitter should probably not be to go follow 1,000 people. First of all, you very possibly might not be able to due to recent limits set by Twitter. This act seems kind of spammy, and that's the last thing you want to do in social media. You should aim to let your community grow organically. That said, there are a few things you can do to get started.

The first thing you absolutely have to do once you sign up for a Twitter account (though you can do this before signing up for Twitter, but you won't be able to do much beyond this), start monitoring who and what people are saying about your company . Go to Search.Twitter and search for your company name, your executives' names, perhaps your competitors' names. You'll see all the recent tweets that mention that name or phrase. What's also great about these services is you can subscribe by RSS to this thread so you'll be able to keep tabs on new posts about your company. When someone does talk about your company - respond, favorite the tweet perhaps if it's favorable, and start following the person.

A very close second most important thing to do once you're on Twitter is to actually engage in the community . If you want people to follow you, you need to give them a reason to. Post interesting tweets, respond to others (see first point above). As noted in my word of caution, you want to be an authentic participant in the community. One of the wonderful things about Twitter is that you have to opt-in to receive someone's updates (follow them). So, you need to think of ways to warrant a follow. I've been pretty impressed with Whole Foods in this regard. I started following them, though I'm no Whole Foods nut, because of their interesting tweets like "TOTD" (tweet of the day), and interesting food-related tweets like plugging food festivals across the country.

Those are really the two most important things you can do on Twitter. But, if you're still interested in ramping up your Twitter following, here are a few additional ideas :

• Go back to Search.Twitter and search on more general phrases that relate to the audience you're trying to reach. Subscribe to those updates and respond/follow as appropriate.
• Check out the directories, like Twellow . Twellow is a directory of Twitter users categorized by industry or interest. There are a few other cool services, like Twubble and Twits Like Me . ReadWriteWeb posted a great article on these services here .
• Follow those who follow you. People like to feel like you're listening to them and that they're engaging in a two-way conversation with you. A follow-back is a great way to set that environment.
• Check out who your followers are following. They are likely interested in similar topics, and are a natural extension to your existing network.

Read more information at : HubSpot

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