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Cutting Through the Noise - Why, Who, and How to Follow on Twitter

How many people do you follow on Twitter? If you don't know who to follow, aren’t sure how to find people to follow, or don't know why you should invest time to figure it out, this article will help.

Written Nov 25, 2009, read 2036 times since then.

In my experience using Twitter and teaching about Twitter, I’ve found that a lot of people don't know who to follow, aren’t sure how to even go about finding people to follow, and aren’t clear about why they should invest the time to figure this out.

It does take some legwork. With Twitter’s popularity and expansion over the last year, there are now more people on the network than ever. There are bots that will let you mass-follow everyone who has listed their location as “your town”, but in most cases this will net you thousands of new connections, maybe tens of thousands. If that’s what you want, great! But thousands of connections are difficult to manage, even with tools like Tweetdeck. Most people and businesses don’t want to use Twitter that way.

Before we talk more about following, I think it’s important to make this point: “listening” is really a better word than “following” to describe what happens on Twitter. And it’s less creepy. No one wants to be a stalker, or even worse, be stalked. But everyone wants to be listened to! And it behooves us all to listen to each other, especially as businesses using social media.

So why should you follow people on Twitter? The first and best answer is “because you want to listen to what they have to say.” Conversations grow out of listening. You can’t comment on something you don’t hear someone say. You can’t answer a question or solve a problem if you don’t hear it. And if you show that you’re interested in listening to others, they will probably “listen back” (follow you). And then they can help YOU. See the beauty of it?

Another reason I like to think of my Twitter family as people I’m listening to is that it puts the responsibility squarely on my shoulders.

“My followers” is all about them. “They’re following me and they’re listening to me, because I’m so witty and knowledgeable. These folks decided to follow me, they must like me! My job is to feed them good content so they’ll keep following me.”

“People I’m listening to” is all about me. “I chose to listen to them and they might choose to listen back. It’s my responsibility to say things that are interesting or helpful to listen to. My job is to care.”

It all starts with a potential for a relationship. That’s really all twitter is, folks. Following doesn’t equal instant relationship. Having 10,000 followers doesn’t automatically make you popular or influential. It’s what you do with these connections that matters. But you can’t do anything with connections that don’t exist… so how do you figure out who to follow?

Search.twitter.com – use this search tool to find people who are talking about things you want to hear. Follow them (listen) and join the conversation. If you’re tweeting for yourself personally, you may want to search topics that interest you, and make connections all around the globe. If you’re looking to connect with other local folks, find people who are talking about your town or popular places or events in your town.

If you’re tweeting for a business or organization, you have the chance to be really creative. Think about who your business can help. Who might benefit from listening to you? Listen to them first. Think about what questions they might ask that you can answer. Search these phrases or words. You can even answer people’s questions without following them! (Remember, you can send and @reply to anyone, but can only direct message people who are following you.) You should also search your business or organization’s name. See what people are saying about you, respond to questions or problems, and know who your fans are.

Use the “find people” feature on your twitter.com home page to search for people or businesses by name. Wonder if your local book store is on Twitter, or your next door neighbor? In most cases, you can find out (if they’ve put identifying information in their bio).

Twittergrader.com – search “elite” by location to find popular tweeters in your area. Now, these are folks that twittergrader has determined are popular by their algorithms. It’s by no means a comprehensive list (and you’ll only see their top 50). Just because someone ranks high on this list doesn’t necessarily mean they will be someone you enjoy following, or even that they’re really “good” at twitter. But it’s a place to start.

Find other twitterers you like and look at who they follow and who is following them. Now that twitter has a lists feature, you can also look at your followees lists, if they’ve made any. And on that note, you can see any user’s lists, whether you follow them or not, by going to twitter.com/username/lists. (This will show you a timeline of tweets by people the user has put on that particular list.)

Remember, you can always unfollow if a relationship isn’t working out. As you grow your twitter “family”, people will start following you, and then you’ll have to decide whether to follow them back. Don’t feel obligated to listen to everyone (psst- it’s impossible!).

Along with more followees come more tweets. What’s the point of listening to all these people if you never hear what they have to say? Remember, twitter is not a popularity contest (at least, not for most of us.) Think quality over quantity. If you can only manage following 25 people on twitter, then only follow 25. Most people can manage up to about 100 “relationships” on twitter in ten minutes to an hour a day without using any fancy tools or desktop applications. (And this doesn’t mean you talk with each of these people every day, read every tweet they post, or respond to everything they say.)

If you want to follow more people than that, tools like Tweetdeck make it a lot easier. The main feature of these tools is that you can create groups and search or filter within those groups to narrow in on the conversations you want to participate in. Tweetdeck allows me to manage following about a thousand people quite easily.

The lists feature on your twitter.com account now allows you to put your tweeps into groups, effectively creating different timelines within your own account. However, since you can’t search or filter within twitter lists, I personally don’t find this feature as useful as Tweetdeck.

Ultimately, Twitter is not just one more place to push out your content. It’s a tool you can use to join in on conversations. Now that everyone and their cat has a Twitter account, there’s a lot more noise out there. It’s hard to find the good stuff. How do you cut through the noise? You create your own little corner of the twitter-verse by choosing who to listen to.

How do YOU decide who to follow? What tricks or tips did I miss? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Learn more about the author, Naomi Whitmore.

Posted by Len Rosen, Toronto, Ontario Canada | Nov 26, 2009

Hi Naomi, I'm still getting my feet wet with Twitter and found your article a good beginning in my personal wading with followers and who to follow. I have seen an explosion in followers in the last week and when I look at these profiles it is very hard to decide whether following them will be a giant distraction or not. You have provided some valuable pointers in your article but I am wondering if Twitter is just the porch to other means of communication through the Internet.

For example it would seem to me that 140 characters has limited capacity for developing a true understanding of the person on the other end of the Tweet.

I would quickly want to move to another social networking platform like BizNik, LinkedIn or Facebook to get a better understanding.

What are your thoughts?
Posted by Miriam Dyak, Seattle, Washington | Nov 26, 2009

Naomi - this is so helpful! I've been too intimidated to get on twitter, but I read your article and got going. Thanks! The only thing that would have improved your article would have been clickable links.

Helping people live beautifully in a difficult world
Posted by Orene Kearn, Burlingame, California | Nov 29, 2009

I also found this article to be very helpful. I am overwhelmed by all of the stuff on Twitter which I find to be a lot of garbage. I have saved your helpful tips on how to handle Twitter more efficiently as well. Thank you.
Posted by Nélida Kreer, Montevideo, Montevideo Uruguay | Nov 29, 2009

Thank you Naomi, for a great article and for sharing your views. Sometimes I get a bit intimidated when I see these Tweeters who follow thousands and are in turn followed by thousands - whereas I am still below the 50 marker line. But I am very focused in my tweets on my interests and activity, so I only follow those people who post on subjects which I want to hear about. When I see that there is a great deal of time-robbing clutter in somebody's tweets, I un-follow them. When somebody starts following me but I am not particularly keen on reading them on my home page, I just politely thank them for the follow and move on. I was glad to see that you share this view, and thank you for the tips and tools about ways and means of searching for the right connections. A great article, all the way. Thanks again.
Posted by Naomi Whitmore, Yakima, Washington | Dec 01, 2009

Thanks everyone! I apologize for the delay in posting a response - it was silly of me to publish an article right before leaving for a long holiday weekend, but when the muse strikes, what can you do?

Len, in answer to your question, it's very true that Twitter is often just an opening for connection on another platform. I read more blogs now because I have been engaged by their authors' tweets than I did before joining Twitter. However, I think that you can learn more about a person in 140 characters than may seem possible at first. It's not just 140 characters after all, but 140 characters over and over (as often as the person tweets). When considering whether to follow, you hopefully have more than just one or two tweets, plus a bio, to judge by. I like to think of Twitter as a place to share the "best of". I don't know if others always see it this way, but hopefully what they choose to share in their limited number of characters is really valuable and can give you a good sense of what their core message is. Or their favorite quote, or food, or other triviality. haha

Miriam, I will try to fix the clickable links problem, thanks! That would definitely be more useful.

Recently someone I follow (I think it was @equalman) said that when someone asks him what the ROI (return on investment) of social media is, he asks "what's the ROI of your cell phone?" The point is, all we get out of any of these things - email, phone, twitter - is what we put in, and what we make of it. So following 50 isn't better than following 10,000 and following 10,000 isn't better than following 50... it's all about what works for YOU!
Posted by Len Rosen, Toronto, Ontario Canada | Dec 01, 2009

Hi Naomi, What I like about Twitter is the network ability. It seems that I can be connected to people well outside my traditional circle, even more than in social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn. You may be absolutely right that the essence of effective communication can be boiled down to 140 characters. But some of the tweets I see people post surprise me for their inanity. There is a profound difference between Twitter users who see it as a B2B or B2C marketing opportunity and those who are just being sociable. I'm sure both types of users see the others as twits. I continue to explore and play with it and will monitor the comments here for the pearls that may emerge. Thanks for starting this conversation.

Len
Posted by Joyce Mnkande, laurel, Maryland | Dec 03, 2009

I am still relatively new on Twitter but I am loving it. Like you said, you have to take the time to learn what works for you and what you want it to do for you. I use it strictly as a B2B tool and occassionally add a little personal note because it is also a social media. However, I don't share everything, every minute as some do.
Posted by Jeanne Yocum, Granby, Massachusetts | Dec 03, 2009

Very helpful article, Naomi. I believe the real ROI from Twitter for me will be in attending tweetups and meeting folks face to face. I attended my first such meeting last month and met several great people. When on-line connections become real life connections, that can truly make things happen!
Posted by Orene Kearn, Burlingame, California | Dec 03, 2009

What's a tweetup and how do they work?
Posted by John Kilbride, Calgary, Alberta Canada | Dec 03, 2009

Hi Naomi, nice article, thank you. I found many of your suggestions for using Twitter for business right on the mark with respect to how we counsel our clients on the use of Twitter for business.

Something we find important in order to see an ROI with Twitter right off the hop, is to categorize your Twitter objectives in at least 2 segments, these in turn will help you identify who to follow:

1) As a tool to help enhance your own business; and 2) As a tool to help acquire new business (which is, at the end of the day, the name of the game).

Re: 1) As a tool to help enhance your own business.

Number 1 is often overlooked as a Twitter business objective, but is very easy to accomplish. In a nutshell, Twitter can be a useful tool to find like-minded individuals, meaning individuals in your business sector (or similar), with which to establish connections in order to share ideas on how to improve each others businesses (delivery models, price models, sales targeting, marketing practices, etc.). You'll be amazed at how interested people are to share with a like-minded professional.

Re: 2) As a tool to help acquire new business.

Number 2 is often misunderstood as a Twitter objective because people all to often get caught up in the social aspect of Twitter, or start following people that have no relationship to your business.

Your comments about who to follow really resonate with this objective. At the very least, when determining who to follow keep in mind what your target market is and who your ideal customer is (your customer profile). That will keep you on the right track with respect to who to follow (and who not to follow). Don't get caught up in the number of followers you have -- it's a meaningless stat.

One other thing, as you mentioned, always check the reference websites associated with each Twitter account. If it's not professional, stay away.

Sorry, got a little long-winded there.

Thanks Naomi, John.

P.S. Affiliate marketers and affiliate businesses are not real businesses yet they dominate Twitter. Just ignore them and move on.
Posted by Maria Thomas, Atlanta, Georgia | Dec 03, 2009

I am still trying my best to understand Twitter...your article has cleared up many of my questions. Thanks for sharing!
Posted by Lisa J. Jackson, Nashua, New Hampshire | Dec 04, 2009

I've found the article and comments helpful. I've been on Twitter for a while now, and am enjoying the Lists feature to help me organize who is who.

I started off with a sociable goal and followed whoever interested me, but over the past several weeks I've been evaluating each person I'm following and find that a lot aren't saying anything I find interesting, so I unfollow.

By using Lists, I can still have an 'eye' on folks without their tweets filling up my screen.

I've always kept an eye on the Spammer type people who follow me and block them right away.

As a writing & editing biz owner, I tweet twice a week on grammar tips, and once a week or once every other week put out recommendations of others in a similar field I think are helpful.

But I do have to change the focus a bit, and this article and the comments have given me some ideas on how to do that.

Good stuff. :)
Posted by Shaun Lawrence, Irvine, California | Dec 05, 2009

Thanks for sharing this information, I have been meaning to get an account and I have heard good things about Twitter. I wonder if my firm will be followed.
Posted by Naomi Whitmore, Yakima, Washington | Dec 12, 2009

I've been reading through recent comments - thanks so much for your insights and additions, everyone! - and had a couple more thoughts.

When I first started tweeting, just over a year ago, I vowed not to be one of "those people" who tweeted inane updates about their dog's walking schedule or how much they enjoyed the latest episode of American Idol. But I soon realized that the people I most enjoyed following were the people who injected a little bit of themselves into their twitter stream. Who wants to read "new blog post" or "check out our sale" or "here's how we can help you" tweets all day?

So I started sharing some personal stuff too, and guess what... people started interacting with me more! I began to form relationships, not just associations. And when I did have something to share about my business, people listened.

I don't think there's really that much of a divide between using twitter for business and using it "just fun" personal reasons. There do need to be limits - as they say, don't tweet/blog/say anything that you wouldn't want to be plastered on a billboard - but people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. How on earth do you build trust via something as trivial as twitter? In my opinion, by being yourself... one tweet at a time.

One of my very favorite social media gurus, Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) says successful marketing strategies in today's social media world boil down to one word: CARE. And twitter is the perfect place to do that, because in order to care you have to listen, and twitter is just one big listening station! Exciting, isn't it? :)
Posted by Naomi Whitmore, Yakima, Washington | Dec 12, 2009

Orene, to answer your question about tweetups, they are basically meetups for people who tweet (we tweeters have a penchant for making "tw" words!).

A tweetup is typically organized and promoted via twitter, and people often put their twitter names on their nametags at the event. They can also be impromptu - for example, people using twitter to organize at a large event or conference might form an impromptu tweetup if they discover they are all going to lunch at the same restaurant.

You can use sites like Eventbrite to manage invitations and RSVP's, or just put out the word via twitter and other social media.