I’ve been using Twitter since August 25th, 2008, and it is a fantastic medium for promoting your ideas, discussing topics with like-minded (or non-like-minded) individuals, and getting all sorts of news and updates from various areas of life. Using a Twitter account, you send short 140 character messages to nobody in particular. People can find your “tweets” in searches, or choose to follow you, meaning that they get presented with a list of your tweets on their homepage.
I won’t pretend that getting as many followers as possible isn’t one of my aims, but I want to do so legitimately, and I want my followers to find my tweets both interesting and entertaining. Over the months I have changed my approach to Twitter many times, seeing what works and what doesn’t. I want to share my experiences of the last 11 months in the form of suggestions that I think will help those just starting out on Twitter to gain followers and enrich their Twitter experience. Since this is an atheist blog, some of my suggestions will be focused on the Twitter atheist community specifically, but they can be adapted to suit any person.
Write a decent description!
You can learn a surprising amount from the 140 character tweets that people send out, but it is a good idea to use the 160 character “One Line Bio” feature to explain your views in a more precise way.
This bio is displayed next to all your tweets on the main Twitter site, underneath your name. If you have a website or blog, make sure to include it in the “More Info URL” field, as it will also display (as a hyperlink) underneath your name. Given that 160 characters is still not much room, I suggest using single word descriptions as tags (comma separated). My bio reads:
Atheist, Blogger, Skeptic, Freethinker, Rationalist, Computer Programmer, Student, High Priest of the Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit .
Anyone now viewing my Twitter page can now see how I describe myself, and what groups I associate with. This description could mean the difference between a passer-by and a new follower, and a further advantage is the use of descriptions in third-party Twitter applications (which I will go into later).
Use a good Twitter client!
Whilst the web interface is fine for tweeting general messages, if you want to have a better experience, I would advise installing a Twitter client. The company behind Twitter have released an extensive API, meaning that clients can be made for all manner of devices; PCs, phones, iPods, etc.
The Twitter client I recommend is TweetDeck because it is very powerful and supported on all platforms (even iPhone/iPod). There are great features like url-shortening included, making sure your tweets are as content-filled as you can get them. TweetDeck allows you to view multiple columns of tweets, so you can see the people you follow, your mentions, direct messages, and even searches as they update.
Although TweetDeck is filled to the brim with features, there are other alternatives such as Seesmic Desktop which might be preferable. I suggest you take your time and pick out the client that suits your needs; there are certainly many to choose from. Remember, there is nothing stopping you from changing your choice at a later date either!
Say something interesting!
Twitter is a place for conversation, for spreading ideas, and for getting your voice heard. Yes, it can be used for status updates (“Just going to eat lunch”, “Night night Twitter *yawn*”), but people will respond to you more if you have something interesting to say.
Write questions to your followers, or ask them to comment on something. I asked my followers what they used Twitter for, and the response was unanimous: talking to other people (atheists) and sharing links. Don’t be afraid to post something controversial or ask questions. More importantly though, be yourself; if you find a video funny, post it; it you have a random thought, post it! Think of Twitter as a gateway into your mind more than a way for celebrities to talk to their fans.
Reply to tweets!
Once you have started following people, you will find them asking questions or asking for comments on certain things. Replying to them not only gives them feedback, but also makes them aware of your existence. A well thought out reply will always be appreciated, and they may follow you for it. Not everyone will follow someone for making a reply, but it is certainly a factor, and you have nothing to lose by doing it.
Don’t feel the need to respond to every tweet you see though, and certainly don’t just respond to somebody and say “I agree” or “lol”. A reply should add to the conversation, and if you mention something that prompts them to reply to you, well then all the better! Since all replies are public, the reply to your comment will be sent to everyone who follows them, and you may get even more followers from it.
Retweet!
Retweeting is a special kind of reply, where you literally send someone else’s tweet again from your account. Usually the tweet has the prefix “RT”, and I would advise always having the name of the person you are retweeting as well. Clients like TweetDeck do this automatically, but if you are using the web interface you will have to add them yourself. Retweets are generally used if someone says something that you find particularly funny, interesting, or thought-provoking. By sending the tweet onto your followers, you are spreading the message, and your retweet may even get retweeted itself!
By far the most popular things that are retweeted are links to various websites. News is spread this way over Twitter, as are popular YouTube videos, and just about anything with a http:// in front of it. Many people add a comment to the retweet message before sending, but you could always send a separate reply to the original tweeter. A problem with retweeting is that if the message is already near to 140 characters long, adding the name and “RT” will go over the limit. Most people get around this by either shortening words (through -> thru, are -> r, etc) or removing / rewording sections of the tweet.
Hashtagging!
Quite simply, this is the action of putting a tag onto the end (or wherever) of your tweet. Tags are called “hashtags” because it is standard to put a hash symbol (#) in front of the tag, so atheism becomes #atheism. Hashtags are interpreted by the Twitter website, and other clients, as links to the Twitter search. So if you wanted to see a load of tweets about atheism, you would search for #atheism in Twitter search, and find a load of hashtagged results!
Hashtagging is useful because you can subscribe to certain hashtags via several clients (or even the website), and have a constant real-time update of that specific tag. For instance, during the confusion over Michael Jackson’s supposed death, the hashtags #mj, #michael, and #michaeljackson were used to track updates sent around Twitter.
A lot of tweets are hashtagged these days, and you might find yourself asking, what on earth does #tcot mean? Luckily, a website has been set up that acts as a dictionary for hashtags, and a quick trip there will tell you that most people use it to mean “Top Conservatives On Twitter“. There are other definitions, but they are not as widely used.
Search for keywords!
Hashtags are useful for putting tweets into a category, but they are useless unless you actually use them to search for other people to follow. Since you only get updates from people you currently follow, finding new people can be difficult. Luckily, there are simple ways to find people who you can reply to or retweet.
TweetDeck has the ability to show search results that update every minute or so. The results include everyone who tweeted your search term, even if you do not follow them. The advantages of this should be pretty obvious, as you can search for things like the atheism hashtag (#atheism) and get a list of tweets tagged with it. You can create multiple searches, or combine search terms with the OR operator (make sure you use capital letters for the OR).
For example, I have a single search column set up in TweetDeck that gives me results for any tweet that contains the words (not just hashtags) “atheism”, “atheist”, “agnostic”, “freethinker”, “skeptic”, etc. I choose not to use hashtags because I wanted to start conversations with theists who talk about atheism (and who do not generally use the atheism hashtag). A search for “#atheism” will return only the hashtagged results, whilst a search for “atheism” will return both hashtagged results and just mentions of atheism.
If you are using the web interface, you can do the same thing, but you will have to open up a new tab at the Twitter search engine and enter your terms. You could create a bookmark to the search url in order to speed up this process. Remember to reload the tab to see new results!
Follow Friday!
Follow Friday is a Twitter meme that happens every Friday (duh!). On that day, you create a tweet containing the names of people you recommend following, and then tag the tweet with either #followfriday or #ff. People who follow you will now have your recommendations, and may start following them if they are not already doing so. Of course, what you are hoping is that other people are writing Follow Friday tweets with your name in them, and you can track this in TweetDeck by looking in the “Mentions” column. If you are using the web interface, you can do a search for your name and see what comes up.
If people do put you in a Follow Friday list, sending them a quick thank you is always a nice thing to do. The problem with Follow Friday is (like many problems in Twitter) related to the 140 character limit. After a while, you want to put more names in your Follow Friday tweet, but end up running out of room. There are several solutions; sending multiple tweets is one, but the solution I have recently started using is having a static page (http://atheistblogger.com/follow-friday) that I add names to.
With the page set up, I can list people I think are worthy of following, as well as a short description of why. I can update the list, and then every Friday I simply send out the url with the #followfriday hashtag. My list is incomplete; I still need to add more names and the descriptions, but it is a good example of how such pages work.
Mr. Tweet is your friend!
As I previously mentioned, the release of the Twitter API gave way to a large number of applications. Mr. Tweet is one of these applications, and it aims to suggest new people to follow based on the types of people you already follow. In other words, if you follow a lot of atheists, it will give you a load of other atheists as suggestions.
Mr. Tweet works by some clever analytical code, but also through users recommending others for following. Recommending someone is easy to do, and you can read more about the benefits of doing such recommendations on the Mr. Tweet page. Other than recommendations, Mr. Tweet checks your friend’s tweets and determines the users they respond to or mention. This is another great reason why you should reply and retweet people! Your efforts are being noticed by Mr. Tweet, and you will get suggested to people you probably have never even encountered.
Other applications include WeFollow, which tracks people according to three different categories they assign themselves under (mine are atheism, atheist, and blogger), and Twibes, which allows you to join specific groups in Twitter and post to them using hashtags. Be sure to join the Atheists Twibe and the JaffaCakes Twibe (because you know there is a God, and McVities be His name).
Sync your blog!
There are an awful lot of atheist blogs out there, and it would be a shame to use a micro-blogging service like Twitter without posting links to your own blog. If you are gaining followers on Twitter, why not gain readers of your blog at the same time? Luckily, you don’t have to remember to post links to your blog every time you make a post. With twitterfeed you can link your RSS feed to your Twitter account, so that when you post something new on your blog, twitterfeed will (depending on the update rate you set) post the link on your Twitter account for you.
Twitterfeed allows you to customize the tweet it sends, so you can add a prefix of something like “New Post:”, and suffix it with a hashtag (like #atheism). This will increase the chances of your post being picked up and retweeted by the Twitter community.
Start conversations!
140 characters doesn’t seem much, but you can make several points if you word them correctly. Twitter tracks conversations remarkably well, and applications like TweetDeck improve this process. Repeated responses to a single person is very noticeable in a Twitter feed, so you may get people joining the conversation, or starting a new one with you
Don’t go for people who have the same opinions as you, but instead seek out people who you can have a proper discussion with. Over the weeked, I started numerous conversations with a Christian concerning proof, knowledge, what would make me believe, etc. Yesterday evening, I challenged an astrologer who was mouthing off skeptics to prove astrology worked. After a bit of back and forth banter (the JREF and the $1,000,000 prize were mentioned on more than one occassion), he agreed to draw up a chart for me and see how accurate it was.
What is my point? Well, during these conversations, numerous people were reading them, sending me messages, etc. My follower count jumped repeatedly. Evidently, people were interested in what I had to say. I think that by using my above tips, you will be well on your way to gaining many followers, and a larger outreach in the atheist Twitter community.
If you enjoyed this post, please follow me (and say hello!) on Twitter: @ah8r
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=df89e90e-aaea-4b42-8b9a-64b1719b2d9a)
Contact Adrian Hayter
My Facebook
My Atheist Nexus Page
My Twitter
My Reddit
My Atheist Spot
My FriendFeed
My Technorati
Atheist Forums
Loading ...
