Who to Follow On Twitter

It is often said that Twitter is only as good as the people you follow. But, with more than 100 million users in the world, it can be difficult to decide just who to follow on Twitter.

Getting Started

A good starting point is to decide exactly what your focus is for using your Twitter account. What do you want it to achieve? Is it to raise awareness of your business, brand or writing? Engage potential customers? Or will it be a mix of personal tweets as well as business. Your purpose for having an account will help you decide who to follow on Twitter.

From there, you will be able to choose whether to follow other accounts that are of interest to you personally, or those which are only relevant to your business. For example, you may wish to follow celebrities, periodicals, and other sites that will entertain you and help you keep your finger on the pulse of what is current. But, these accounts may not be so relevant or useful to your business. For this, you will want to find communities of potential customers or advocates of what you do.

Deciding Who To Follow

It can be helpful to do a bit of planning before you jump onto Twitter and follow all the suggestions it will give you on who to follow. Here are 10 tips to get you started:

1. Write a description of your ideal customer. Consider what they have in common, and the words they might use in their Twitter bios.
2. Use tools such as Followerwonk to find and follow the people who have these keywords in their bios.
3. Compile a list of competitors and find them on Twitter. (You don't need to follow them!) If they have the same ideal customer base as you do, you can follow their followers to build your own account.
4. Follow influencers and leaders in your field. These could be other prominent business authors, coaches or public figures who are at the forefront of what you do, and who will keep you informed and current.
5. Find the Twitter accounts of trade magazines or periodicals who specialise in what you do.
6. Follow other magazines and online periodicals which may be of interest to your ideal customer. These can be very useful in sourcing good content that you can retweet.
7. Follow local and national journalists who may be interested in what you do
8. Follow other organisations and businesses which your ideal customer may also follow.
9. Use Tweepi's ‘Follow Followers' feature to follow relevant people who follow all these other accounts.
10. Do a search for hashtags that are relevant to your field and niche. Follow active accounts who are participating in the conversation for that hashtag regularly.

Once you find the people who are relevant to you and your business, follow them and often they will follow you back. This is a great way to build your Twitter account with the right followers, with whom you can engage, build relationships, and awareness of what you have to offer.

Who have you followed on Twitter? What other tips do you have for building a fabulous account? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments below.