Jump Out of Your Skin

I know I do not have a lot of followers but 8 days ago I sent out a Tweet about having 333 followers and thought it was an interesting number.  Today 8 days later I am coming near 600 followers and possibly the 666 (hence the number of the beast) I sat back and tried to analyse how I had doubled the number of followers in 8 days with approx 40 new followers a day. So here is what I think happened in the interim to increase that number

A Lot of Time On Twitter

To be honest I am spending a lot of time on Twitter reading tweets, looking at links.  With Tweetie on my IPhone that makes it a lot easier.  I monitor my Twitter stream and get to know who is on it to improve interaction.  Building your socila networks is hard but enjoyable – I have already made some friends on Twitter for solid information sharing and @grainnemurphy even came out for a run with my running group last Saturday so its nice to have met her (unfortunately she runs faster than me so might have to get rid of her).

My Re-Tweets

I think retweeting is an important thing to do to share interesting information with my followers.  If I see a post that is interesting, relevant, thought provoking or just simply funny then often as not I will retweet it.  When you retweet you are putting your content out to all your followers and the people following them so they might also find it funny and follow you.

Interesting Tweets

I try and send interesting Tweets in the first place.  I usually send the following mix of Tweets

• News Articles that I read on RSS that I think others in my social network might find interesting to read and perhaps RT. I have looked and not many people do RT my articles so I am hoping to improve the quality of what I send.  I use Google Reader to read my feeds and a couple of times a day I blast through the new news and pick out what might be interesting.
• Technical Tit Bits: I do not do long complex blogs on technical items but like to what I call a 30-60 second fix type of blog where someone can take a time out from what they are doing, implement the tip and carry on.
• Humour -  I occasionally send out something which I think is funny – most times it isn’t but I laugh.

My Bio on www.twitter.com

I spell out what I am interested in my bio on www.twitter.com.  Hope this is some influence.

Ireland – Ireland – Ireland

There is a growing number of people on Twitter in Ireland and I sense that Irish tweeters and bloggers tend to follow relevant people in that area.  I use www.twellow.com to look for interesting Irish people to follow.

Pure Chance and Spammers

Often the number of followers I have increase when I just get a few spammers who follow me and start sending me a ton of rubbish.  I quickly block them.  It reduces the number of followers but it is really quality and not quantify you want.

Follow me on @kdaly100 if you wish to see my Tweets

@DestinyNOW (http://www.carriekish.com/) asked the question today on Twitter what were peoples Twitter goals and it made me think for a bit on what they could be.  These are my main goals for Twitter (here comes a list from the list fanatic)
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Meet Interesting People Who Share Similar Interests

I use Twitter in the first place to meet interesting people who share similar interests to me in technology (not necessarily in life but it helps).  I usually follow people who have Web, Internet, technology, WordPress and SEO in their bios.  I also try and follow people from Ireland to build some sort of useful social network for my web design business.

Help and be Helped

I like to help people.  Whether it be how to use an application, suggest a useful tip, or directions from here to Oz (follow the yellow brick road).  I often ask questions and as I build my network in step one above I get good high quality answers from the people on my list.

Be Up To Date

Twitter is nearly as good as my RSS feeder now (see how to add topics to Twitter on RSS) and I subscribe to a number of news and sports services on it.  I am big American sports fan and this is one of the main ways that I can see and read the news on NBA, NFL and NHL and even College basketball in th NCAA.

Be Considered an Expert

As I try and help people out I hope that I will learn as well and people will regard me as an expert in some fields (I believe I expert in several Internet technologies and in fitness and diet).  Twitter has encouraged me to read more about the topics I love and help people out ther to learn more with posts to improve their experiences.

Have a Short Chat

I do not believe Twitter is a chat tool even though some people do use it as such (I quickly unfollow them (2-3 exchanges is enough please!!).  But I do occasionally have a quick Tweet exchange with people who post interesting tweets.

Even though you may not be following certain people on Twitter you can still keep track of specific topics using an RSS feed of any topic of choice.  You can then choose to follow specific people who may be tweeting relevant and interesting content.  It puts another dimension to using Twitter as an information source.

Here how you can do it.

• First go to the search option in Twitter
• Enter the subject that you are interested in.  Make it as specific as possible so that you don’t get snowed under with too much information. One I have used recently was ‘WordPress plugins’
•  This will then present you with a list of Tweets from people on with the words WordPress plugins in their tweets.
• Click on the “Feed for this query” button and add these results to your RSS feeder.

Job done.  To fine tune this query I would add http as part of the search so that the search only shows up tweets with a link to relevant information.  Enjoy.

Tweet me at @kdaly100 if you have found this helpdul