Incoming! Making the most of your Twitter Feed.

 

It’s not difficult to find advice about the half of Twitter that most people seem to pay the most attention to – the outgoing part. The experts will tell you the best times to Tweet, how often you should tweet, and what sort of content gets read the most. Should I use hashtags, and if so, how many is too many? Are Tweets that include links to other content more or less likely to be read? Heck, if you search Google for “How long should a tweet be?” You will get about 277,000,000 results. That’s 277 MILLION, or about 2 million results for each of the 140 characters your Tweet is limited to!

Lost in the shuffle apparently is the other half of the Twitter phenomenon, which is the ability it gives us to stay connected with hundreds or thousands of other people who are eager to share content with you. If you pay attention to this side of Twitter it will be as valuable as your outgoing strategy will be. Here are some thoughts on being a good “follower”.

First, remember that just because you COULD follow thousands of other accounts, that doesn’t mean you should. Twitter is like a stream of information flowing outside your front door. The water (or in this case posts or information) that flows past right now heads downstream and is quickly lost in the distance. More water will follow, but that part of the stream is gone by. The more people you follow, the wider the stream – which can be a good thing – but also the swifter it flows. Most of us don’t have the time or leisure to camp out on Twitter all day reading everything that flows by, so it’s wise to select the people you are going to follow. Look for leaders in the fields where you want to do business. For example, I do consulting work, mainly with non-profits and behavioral health organizations, so a fair percentage of the accounts I follow on Twitter are working in those areas. I want to know what they are thinking about, what keeps them up at night, and what they pay attention to, so that I can better communicate with my marketplace. There is also a tendency for people to follow those who follow them, so by following people who might be my customers someday, they might also follow me and that brings me into their sphere. The second group of people I follow are leaders who provide services similar to those I provide. Not necessarily direct competitors, but following the competition is not a bad strategy either! If you Tweet about Social Media Strategy, Grantwriting/Fundraising, Virtual Worlds or the smart use of technology, I am probably following you! The third major category of people I follow represent those who I think can teach me the most. People who are Tweeting about business strategy, innovation, disruptive innovation, and thinking a few days ahead of the rest of us are great reads.

The rest of my “following” group is made out of friends and acquaintances, major news organizations and a miscellany of others, but I want to keep these numbers to the minority to slow the stream down a bit. Another way to compensate for this fast flow of information, though, is to remember that when you read a valuable Tweet from someone, if you click on their username in your Twitter feed, you can see all of their recent Tweets, including all of the ones you missed while you were off posting a picture of your cat on Facebook, or working, or sleeping! So even while the stream flows on, all is not lost. The further you scroll down someone’s Tweets list, the further back you can see in their posting history. I’ve not traced anyone back to their very first post, but I believe it is possible to do so. A side tip on this topic, if you are thinking about adding someone to your Twitter feed, and are embracing the strategy of including only quality Tweeters on your feed, take a look at your candidate’s history. If you read their last 10 or 20 installments and only find one or two that seem to be relevant or interesting to you, maybe you should give them a pass. Similarly, cull your list from time to time. Someone who you found meaningful to follow a year ago may not be so useful to you anymore.

My third suggestion is that you create lists, and group the people you follow together in ways that allow you to see just the posts of those who regularly Tweet about topics of interest, reading them without interference from other tidbits of information that drop into your feed in the order they are posted. For example, I have a list of “Social Media Experts”, another of “Addiction Tweeters” and one for “Unity3D Experts” (Unity3D is a game development software tool I use in my work of creating virtual multiuser online environments for my healthcare clientele). Here’s how to create your own group and help focus your attention. In the top right corner of your Twitter page, you can access your Profile and Settings, by clicking on your account avatar. The dropdown box includes a choice for “lists” (see below)

Twitter Lists

When you open this link, you will see a button marked “Create New List” and that leads to a screen that lets you specify the list name, a brief description (only 100 characters, surprisingly, why not 140?), and the choice to make the list public or private. Only you can see your private lists. Once the list is created, you can search for people to add. Also, anytime you have someone’s Twitter feed open, look for the gear icon, and you will see how easy it is for you to add them to one or several of your lists. By the way, on your “lists” page you will note a tab labeled “Member of” which will show you who has added your account to one of their lists! This can give you at least a little idea of how popular you might be.

A brief note about public lists. Since they are, by definition, available to all Twitter users, you can often find lists that someone else has already created, and by subscribing to their lists, you get the advantage of being able to call it up whenever you want. Try this, enter a term of interest, say “Health Care Leaders” into your Twitter main page search box. Then click the box labeled “Timelines” on the top left of your page. Voila, you will see the public lists that are available that are related to Health Care Leaders. Pick the one(s) you want, hit subscribe, and the next time you open your own Lists page you will be able to go right to that new list! Awesome.

I follow about 1,650 accounts on Twitter, so it is important to me that I use my time on Twitter to best advantage. These ideas have helped me and I hope they might help you too! By the way, the consensus seems to be that the ideal tweet should be between 70 and 100 characters. In case you were wondering.