This is a guest post by Manal Assaad from The Manalyst.
You can follow her on Twitter @TheManalyst.
I live in the Middle East and you don’t need statistics to know that people here are more of Facebook fans, probably because we tend to be very talkative and 140 characters simply doesn’t cut it for most of us. Or perhaps because FarmVille doesn’t have an account on Twitter (for which I’m really grateful).
I asked some friends about that, and read some other people’s opinions on it, and barely any of them seemed to really like Twitter. But I kept seeing it everywhere online and was curious enough to try it, and finally took the leap about 2 months ago. After spending all that time interacting with people on Twitter, learning about it and from it, I really liked it and even became addicted to it! So I figured that liking Twitter or not liking it depends on your understanding of it, your experience with it, and basically how you start on it!
Facebook Vs. Twitter
Seriously, stop comparing between these two. I’ve been on Facebook for many years now and I’m practically new on Twitter but I knew they are completely different from my first day on Twitter. I was told that Facebook is much more fun than Twitter and that the latter is basically only updating your status. WRONG! I’ve had more interactions and more fun on Twitter in these 2 months than I’ve had in years on Facebook. Facebook is really great when it comes to keeping in touch with your family and friends easily, and checking out their photos, and sharing things with them. But Twitter is like having the entire world on wheels that keep the fun coming your way. I was also told that Twitter is lame. WRONG AGAIN! I said it before and I say it again now, Twitter is only lame if you’re following lame people (and dare I say, if you’re lame too!). In one hour on Twitter, you will learn more things than you would in a week on Facebook.
If you really learn how to use Twitter, it can be the best thing ever (until something even better comes along in the future, it will for sure, but for now Twitter is doing just great). Now here are some answers that would help you start on Twitter (they’re also good if you’ve already started but not really doing well!):
What Do I Use Twitter For?
Before you decide to use twitter, you need to know WHY you want to use it. Do you have a blog/website that you want to promote? Do you have a business that you want to grow? Or do you just have a lot of spare time and you want something new and cool to have fun doing? If it’s the latter, then you’ve come to the right place, because I tweet for fun mainly. Sure it doesn’t matter to anyone else why you want to be on Twitter (unless you’re a spammer, in which case STAY AWAY!), but it would help you to know what your goal is to know where to go from there. In my opinion, there is no wrong reason to be on Twitter, there are just wrong uses of it. If you’re not sure what the experience is going to be like, then read some posts about it first, but the experience greatly varies from one person to the other. Some people are addicted to it, some people think it’s very useful, and others just can’t understand it and even hate it. So I say the best bet is to just go ahead and try it for yourself!
Tips: If you want to learn everything about Twitter, you can start here with Mashable’s Twitter Guidebook (who you should follow as well).
Who Do I Follow?
There is no general rule here. There are people from everywhere tweeting about everything all the time (Yes, all the time!). So you can decide to follow whoever you want to follow and that depends on your goal as per the previous point. Basically there are different types of tweeters, and you can learn about them from Guy Kawasaki’s The Six Twitter Types or Mashable’s The 10 Users You’ll Meet On Twitter. You might want to follow people in your niche so you can get the scoop on all the related news if you want to use Twitter for professional goals, or follow interesting people who tweet about anything that you can find online, or maybe specialized people (or brands) who just focus on one topic like technology, politics, movies, celebrity news, etc. You can follow all the celebrities you love, if you’re into that sort of things, to keep up with their latest updates, the most active and interesting ones being Ashton Kutcher and Alyssa Milano. And there are non-celebrities but really amazing people that you would want to follow like Guy Kawasaki (He has the greatest stuff but don’t expect him to talk to you though), Diana Adams (The most lovable person on Twitter with lots of interesting links and will reply to you), Blair Semenoff (He keeps the interesting links coming, and he still stops once in a while to thank you for a retweet or retweet something interesting you shared), Scott Stratten (this dude is hilarious, enough said!) and many others (you can just check out my VIP list to see who I personally like).
Tips: You can start by following people based on their interests or professions by checking out sites like www.listorious.com or www.wefollow.com; and you can also follow people from the blogs and websites you like.
P.S.: Don’t go on a following frenzy and follow everyone you see. You are only allowed to follow up to 2,000 people at first, until the number of your followers is right about that much (The rule is you can only follow 10% more than the number of your followers once you get to 2,000).
Who Would Follow Me?
Unless you are a celebrity, you will probably suffer with that a bit. Don’t expect the number of your followers to skyrocket anytime soon, and that’s OK. Don’t worry because you will get followers anyway. But the number and quality of your followers will greatly depend on your tweeting skills. Just expect a lot of spammers (people promising you lots of money or followers), bots (accounts with numbers in their names and pictures of hot chicks, especially if they offer you porn) and marketers (basically the same as those who call you up at inconvenient times, or send you junk emails) to follow you in the beginning. And whatever you do, PLEASE don’t fall for those telling you they can get you thousands of followers. I know we all want to have thousands of followers to brag about, but soon enough you’ll know that getting followers who are really interested in YOU and love what you do is much more rewarding than a huge number of followers who don’t really care about you.
Tips: If you really want to reasonably increase the number of your followers then start by following back those who already took the time to follow you, and also look for others who often follow back but make sure they are worth following (as mentioned in the previous point).
What Do I Tweet?
Of course that’s also your business and no one should tell you what to do with your own account, but if you simply want to tweet about meaningless things in your day (like what you had for lunch or dinner, what your mom just said to you on the phone, how upset you are about something, the color of your PJs, etc), don’t expect people to care enough to follow you. Apart from that, you can tweet about anything you like. You can share interesting links you find online, you can share various news, quotes, your blog posts (if you have one), jokes, etc. It all depends on what kind of followers you want, and on what you enjoy best. In my opinion, it would be best to include a bit of everything, that way you know that no matter who is following you, they would at least like some of your stuff, and that would get you other followers as well. And surely it matters what your followers like because you’re not there tweeting “for your eyes only”. The whole point about Twitter, the way I see it, is that you share things you already know and enjoy with others who you think would enjoy them too. So yes, it is (or at least should be) about sharing! Now the best thing you can share with your followers is a conversation. Make sure you always engage with your followers by initiating conversations with them, commenting on their tweets or answering their questions, retweeting the ones you like, or thanking them for retweeting yours and replying to them as often as you can. Always, ALWAYS, make time to talk to people. It’s not called a “social” network on a whim, you are expected and you should socialize with people.
Tips: If you’re not getting many followers, it might mean you’re not a good tweeter. Try to see what others are tweeting and learn from them. You can also see what your current followers like and retweet, and tweet similar things.
P.S.: When you engage in a conversation with someone, make sure you move that to the Direct Messages so you don’t annoy the rest of the followers, unless you think they’d be interested in it. Also, if you initiate a conversation with someone and they don’t answer you back, it’s not the end of the world! (I’ve come to learn that personally, and I was even featured in a post for it). Perhaps they are very busy, or maybe that’s just their style and they don’t like to talk to people. If you get too irritated with it then you can always unfollow them, unless they really tweet valuable things which would redeem their lack of sociability.
When Do I Tweet?
Practically whenever you want and whenever you have time. Once you get the hang of it, you will probably find yourself addicted to it and browsing the net from site to site to find interesting things to share all the time. But I’m sure you have a job or an actual social offline life, and you can’t afford to tweet at all times. But take note that the frequency of your tweets is related to how many followers you get. If you rarely tweet, then you probably won’t get as many followers as you’d like. So just make sure, if you can, that you would tweet at least a couple of times a day. But seriously there is no rule here either, it all goes back to what you’re comfortable with. Just don’t stress over it. If you can make time to tweet interesting things every day, then do so and you will see the difference it would make. If you can’t, then it’s not a big deal, but just make your time there worth it.
Tips: You can use services like Hootsuite to schedule your tweets to a later time. So if you have some free time now, but you know you will be busy the next day or so, you can tweet a few extra things and schedule them to when you would be offline. One thing I personally do is that I reschedule the really interesting things for 6 hours or 12 hours later so that followers who missed them the first time can check them out the second time when I am offline. Just don’t overdo it and keep the repeated tweets at least 6 hours apart and schedule them for the peak times depending on where your followers are.
Of course, there are a lot more things that you need to learn about Twitter and you can find them everywhere online written by much more experienced tweeters. But the 5 things above are what will directly affect your Twitter experience, the rest are just techniques that would make your journey easier.
If you’re still hung up on the 140 character limit, just remember that some of the best things come in small packages… Just look at how small the iPhone is! Or kittens… those are really cute too.
