FINDING PEOPLE TO FOLLOW
Starting on the Find Sources That Interest You page, follow these steps:
1. Click a category name on the left side. Choose a category related to your business. After you click a category of interest, the page refreshes and
you see a list of Twitter account users for that category.
2. Scroll down the list. When you find a user who interests you, click the Follow button. The category you choose may have lots of Twitter users.
In this case, you see a More button at the bottom f the page. You can follow as many people as you want from this page. You may find other
Twitter users from your industry, and maybe even competitors.
Be sure to follow your competitors and other Twitter users from your industry to develop a feel for what other people in your industry are tweeting about.
3. Continue choosing people to follow. When you’re finished, click the Friends button. The page refreshes and you have options to look for friends
from your email address book. This trick works only if you have a Gmail, a Yahoo! or an AOL email address.
4. If you have an email account with a service listed in Step 3, click the service, if you don’t click the Others button to skip to step 10. You’re prompted
for your username and password.
5. Enter your email address and password. Twitter connects with your account server, scans your address book, and posts a list of your email
contacts who are on Twitter. You see a Send Request button next to the name of each person who is on Twitter but can’t be found by email
address. Click the button to have a request sent to your contact indicating that you want to follow them. If an email contact can be located on Twitter
by using their email address, a Follow button appears next to the email address.
6. Choose the contact you want to follow. You can choose as many contacts as you want from this list.
7. After choosing contacts from your email list, click the Others button. A list of email contacts not on Twitter appears.
8. Click the Radio box next to the contact’s email address to send an invitation to join Twitter. You can invite as many people as you want.
9. After inviting contacts to join Twitter, click the Invite These Contacts button. Alternatively, you can click Cancel.
10. Enter the name of someone you want to follow. Search for businesses or people in your industry.
11. Click Search. A list of Twitter users appears. The list may or may not be the person or business you’re looking for. Look at the list carefully to make
sure you choose the right person.
12. Click the Follow button next to the people you want to follow and click the Done! Button when you’ve selected everyone. Twitter will send you an
email requesting verification.
FINDING COMPANIES ON TWITTER
. Twellow is particularly good for finding fellow tweeters in various industries and professions.
. Wefollow also breaks listings up into categories, you can easily add yourself to these directories so other people can find you.
SEARCHING FOR TWITTER ACTIVITY FOR YOUR TYPE OF BUSINESS
Searching for people associated with your trade or profession is all well and good, but you also want to find people who are looking for information about your product or service. You can do this by using the Twitter search engine.
1. Navigate to http://search.twitter.com and then click Advanced Search. The Advanced Search Options appear.
2. Enter the name of your profession in the All These Words text box. If your profession has a specific title, you can try the This Exact Phrase box as an option.
3. Click Search. Twitter returns all tweets that match the phrase you entered in step 2.
4. Review the tweets. Remember that you’re looking for potential clients. Finding tweets from Twitter users in your profession is useful because they
may be people you want to follow.
5. When someone’s tweet gets your curiosity, click the Author’s Avatar. The user’s Twitter page appears in another window, which is wonderful
because you still see the results of your search in another window.
6. Browse the person’s tweets. You’re looking for useful information, image that you’re one of your clients on Twitter,
or a potential client on Twitter, and ask yourself whether this person’s tweets would be of interest to you.
7. If you find the person’s information useful, click Follow. You’re now following the person.
8. Review the rest of the results from your search. Follow as many people as you want. You can always unfollow someone if you find that this information isn’t useful.
9. Repeat steps 2 through 8 with other keywords relevant to your trade or profession.
FINDING OUT WHO’S USING TWITTER AND WHY
Currently, businesses use Twitter for brand building, self-promotion, publicity, customer service, and more. There’s even a third-party site, ExecTweets (www.exectweets.com), that provides easy access to business executives tweets.
You can check on the status of Twitter performance at any time by visiting the Twitter status page at: http://status.twitter.com.
IZEA, a social media marketing company offers two programs for Twitter users to connect with advertisers and get paid to publish tweets. Sponsored tweets (www.sponsoredtweets.com), Social Spark (www.socialspark.com).
You can always find new information about Twitter on the Twitter Blog at: http://blog.twitter.com.
GETTING IN TOUCH WITH LOCAL PEOPLE
Here’s how to create a local twibe:
1. Launch your favorite web browser, navigate to http://search.twitter.com, and then type the hashtag symbol (#) followed by the name of your town.
Then click Search. After you click Search, you see a list of tweets that contain the hashtag and the town. You may end up with tweets about towns with
the same name as yours in other parts of the world.
2. Review the tweets. Look for interesting people to follow based on the information they tweet. If the Twitter user looks like a potential candidate for
your product or service, follow them. If you find tweets from companies offering similar products or services. These people are excellent people to network
with as well, and their followers are probably excellent candidates for your products or services. Note that you can reply to a tweet or view the full tweet on
the Twitter user’s page.
3. Click the avatar of a person whose tweet gets your curiosity. The person’s Twitter page opens in another browser window.
4. Review the person’s tweets and follow the person if you think there a potential candidate for your product or service or is someone with whom you
want to network.
5. Click the Search Browser window and repeat steps 3 and 4 for other tweets that look interesting.
6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 using the names of nearby towns and the country in which you live.
You should find lots of new people to follow, who may eventually follow you and use your product or service.
You can fine tune any Twitter search by clicking the Advanced Search button. In an advanced search, you can exclude words, search by hashtag, find tweets from one person to another, or find tweets referencing a person. You can also search for a word or phrase and then limit the search to a given distance from your hometown.
Another option for you to try searching from is http://nearbytweets.com. You can search for tweets nearby your hometown about anything or about a specific topic.
The last application is the TwitterLocal desktop application. You can download and install this free, cross-platform application from www.twitterlocal.net. You can then search for tweeple within a given area from your zip code.
SEARCHING FOR THE RIGHT TWITTER PEOPLE
What constitutes the right people for your business depends on the type of service or product you sell. You’re sure to find leaders in your industry or product and some of your competitors on Twitter. You have Twitter search at your disposal.
Follow these steps to use Twitter search:
1. Launch your favorite web browser and navigate to: http://search.twitter.com. The Twitter search engine appears.
2. Click advanced search. Advanced options for the Twitter search engine appear. You can search by entering keywords about your product or service,
or you can search for people who market your product or service.
3. In the This Exact Phrase text box, enter the name of a person or company you think may be on Twitter. If the person or company is on Twitter,
you see all tweets that mention the person or company. The tweets might be authored by industry professionals you want to follow.
4. Click Search. The page refreshes and shows tweets that contain the name of the person you entered in step 3.
5. Review the tweets and click the avatar to the left of any tweet that captures your attention. The person’s Twitter page appears in another window.
6. Review the person’s tweets.
7. If the tweets look like the right stuff, follow the person.
8. Review the rest of the search results.
9. Repeat steps 2 through 7 using the text fields in the people section.
You can find tweets sent from a person, to a person, or about a person, of course, you can do the same thing for the name of a company.