How to build a strong network on Twitter

Everyone is talking about Twitter. If you want to use this microblogging platform for personal interest and just interact with your family and friends then you probably don’t need to read this article. But many want to use Twitter as a personal branding tool and as a way to interact with other people, from all around the world, that share the same interests and maybe work in the same niche market. If this is YOU then the information presented here might be at some interest for you.

Create your own trace

I’ve recently written some articles on Why my Twitter followers are not really following me ? and How do you develop a great community that will help you achieve your goals ? that you can check it out for additional information. This “trace” that I’m talking about is something very important. This is your mark. People are finding the information they need by searching : it doesn’t matter if they are using Google or Twitter Search or YouTube or any other search engine. And giving the fact that Google will probably include in their SERPs results from Twitter then this “trace” is something that you have to take into consideration.

If you want to attract people that share the same interests as you then you’ll have to tweet about things that might interests them, use specific words and post links to relevant articles. By using words specific to the vocabulary attached to a specific niche market you’ll have more chances to be found by people interested in your knowledge.

Depending on your market you’ll have to perform a search on Twitter for some specific terms. What is the data you’ll have to look for :

• how old are the results from the first page (this way you know how often you’ll have to post in order to create a relevant trace)
• you can also use an application like www.tweetvolume.com that will show you how many times your specified words appear on Twitter – this is useful to know if your market is present on Twitter or not (although I think any market has already dived into Twitter)

Find related traces

You will also have to find people that tweet about things that interest you. Some people will find you and start following but for others you’ll have to be the one that makes the first step. A social network doesn’t have to be huge but at least a few hundreds or thousands of really good friends or followers is much better. You can find people that talk about your interests by using the standard search.twitter.com and check people out but there is also a service that can do that for you.

Twollow is a service that can do two things for you :

1. if you log in with your Twitter user name and password it can find people that fit in your preferences and autofollow them
2. I didn’t liked the fact that the tool auto-followed people and lucky for me there is a way around this. You can simply start following @Twollow and soon you’ll receive a link to a personal page where you can enter keywords and the tool will constantly search for people that fit those keywords – then you can check them out and decide if you want to follow them or not

Build relations by interacting

Twitter is a social network that lets you post and talk with others in real time. That is why the human factor is much more present. The fact that you can actually have a conversation on a certain subject or having a question answered almost immediately makes this social tool unique. Because of the level of interaction you’ll have to behave more like in real life then on other social networks.

All your tweets will show two things :

1. the market you are interested in
2. what other things interest you and how you are interacting with others

I think that one of the goals in building any social network is to have friends or followers or fans that are really interested in what you do and what you post and what you have to say. On Twitter I consider this to be my most important goal because I’m interested in talking to people that share my interests : I’m not after huge numbers of followers that tweet about everything else but what I’m interested in. Now, don’t think that it’s enough to follow and to be followed by people that are in the same market. You also have to build relations with them : and just like in real life you do this by interacting. The more you tweet with your friends the more they’ll get used to “talk” to you – and this will lead to trust. If people trust you and what you say then it’s more likely to react positive to your links or to your questions. Receiving 100 answers to one of your questions is much better then 5 or 10. How many of you receive 100 answers to a question ? Interacting with others on Twitter is fairly simple : people usually post links or make statements or ask questions – so the door is always open to start a conversation.

And I have to say that once I talked to someone on Twitter, that person will answer almost all the question I might have in the future (if he/she knows the answer). It’s like that saying that “a journey of one thousand steps starts with the first step”. Just say Hi or Hello and the conversation will flow on it’s own : you’ll be surprised how easy it is to talk to people on Twitter : even with power users or authority people in their fields.

How do you do it ?

I would like to know what do you think about this ? How do you do it ? What are your methods of building a strong social network on Twitter ?

The photo from this article is from Twitter Wallpapers – The Blue Bird