Here are five ways to build your audience through Twitter-related tactics:
- Mine Twitter Lists. Once you’re on Twitter for a while, you’ll notice that people place you on public lists. Twitter Lists are a superb way to find relevant people to follow. Lists are generally categorized by a special interest or geographic location. For example, I might be on lists for “marketing experts” or “business educators.” Once you find a relevant person to follow, dig into their Lists and you’re likely to find a goldmine of similar people to follow.
- Search for related hashtags. Do a search on Twitter by your topical interests and follow those who pop up in the results. For example, if you’re in construction, try searching by #construction, #building, #architecture, or #remodeling.
- Join Twitter Chats. Twitter Chats are regularly scheduled online meetings based on special interests. There are chats available for almost any topic you can think of. Do a web search for “Twitter Chats” and you’ll find a list of schedules. When you attend a chat, you’ll discover many new connections with common interests you can follow.
- Keep up with live tweeting. At many industry events, attendees tweet about their experiences as a generous way to share information with those who can’t attend. At large events, there may be thousands of people around the world following an event hashtag. For example, let’s say your sustainable interest has something to do with dogs. Each February, you’ll find people tweeting about the #WestminsterDogShow. Many could be high-potential followers for you.
- Use Advanced Search. Twitter has an extremely useful advanced search function – the only problem is finding it since it’s not on the main Twitter site. To discover it, do a search for “Twitter advanced search.” The menu-driven application can help you find people to follow by keyword, location, and other useful parameters.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building an audience through social media. Twitter will work for many, but it’s also very limited in some ways and may exclude key audiences (the platform isn’t popular in some countries, for example).
– from “Known” by Mark Schaefer
