Want to know how to utilize Twitter to get more readers?

We’ve found the key to get more readers to be in social media. Read on to discover the way to use Twitter to your full advantage, and check out Bob Weisenberg’s Top Twitter Tips for Teaching Twitter Tweeters to Tweet and the Twitter GrandMeister himself, Waylon Lewis, with his video How to Twitter 101.

My Twitter Big Bang Theory

First, reasons why I love Twitter:

1. Everything is livestream
2. Easy to make new connections/relationships
3. To the point – no fluff involved
4. If you like something, instead of pressing the like button, you retweet it!

Major differences between Twitter and Facebook:

1. We’re not really joining conversations on Twitter, rather, we are making relationships by linking people to our conversations
2. Joining a Facebook group is almost a bigger commitment than simply following someone on Twitter – larger posts will come up on your newsfeed and you may not have time to dedicate detailed input to a conversation
3. Twitter offers following suggestions to a larger extent than Facebook does, based upon your followers and followees
4. There is a 140-character limit on all Twitter posts – which includes who you tag and mention

These differences don’t make one option better or worse – it’s a preference as to which is more manageable per person. You can use Facebook along with your twitter account by linking the two accounts – your twitter posts will then appear as a wall post.

And now: How to make Twitter your very best friend

Make an identity for yourself with your name and bio – something that people can easily identify you with. I personally have two Twitter accounts – one for yoga/writing on Elephant Journal and another for a separate blog I’m working on. I like to keep them separate because they are very different identities. I “follow” people based on the identities of the Twitter accounts.

• My one Twitter is @laurenfoste in which I follow all things Yoga and Animals, because that’s what I write about on EJ

• My other account is @lifesabike, in which I follow places, destinations, and all-things-travel, because that’s what I’m writing about on a travel blog

• I also help manage a Twitter account for one of my yoga studios

Follow people based on your interests and best-interests

• Let’s say your interest is yoga, you would begin by following people you already know are on Twitter– Elephant Journal, Waylon Lewis, Bob Weisenberg, all writers on there, etc… If you are new to Twitter, you may follow 40 people on your first round of diligent searching

• You would then filter through the “Who to follow” section of Twitter to follow appropriate accounts

• It’s nice to send a personal message to introduce yourself

• In terms of best-interests, if you are running a business, you might want to follow local businesses in the area. With my yoga studio’s account, my first step on the account was to follow all local businesses that had Twitter accounts. This is an example of following in our best-interests

You will never stop following new people. You are invited to “stalk” other people’s follow lists to see if there is anyone you would like to follow. The “Who to Follow” list should not be your only place to find new followers/followees.

Not everyone will “follow” you back. That’s okay. Don’t be offended. Sometimes mentioning or tagging them in a post is the best way to get their attention, if a follow doesn’t do the trick. Let them see you are promoting them, and they in turn will promote you.

Retweet your tweets! Because Twitter goes in live-stream, the more people post, the further down your post goes in the feed… Thus, retweet your tweets to keep them relevant and towards the top of people’s feeds.

Use Hashtags For example: #elej #yogadork #yoga #yogais #anusara #ashtanga @recoveringyogi #365yoga #spirituality #wisdom #selfhelp

Use the subject of your articles and posts to find followers.
Let me use two examples:

• When I wrote this story about a shelter animal I found animal rescue organizations to follow on Twitter. I mentioned a few of them in the tweet, which ended up looking like this:

Falling for a Shelter Animal @HumaneSociety @BFAS @aronline @missionorange @rescueanimals @BobWeisenberg http://t.co/00vTnK7

After this post, all of the people I mentioned in turn followed me, three of them retweeted my article, and one of them sent me a personal message. Thus, I established about five new relationships. From these relationships I received followings from another animal groups that had seen the retweets.

This is the domino effect of Twitter that I love so much.

Now, I’m growing a following in this subject so that when I make new EJ posts about animals, I can tag more specifically and appropriately. I can make multiple posts to tag multiple people as well.

Here’s a second example of using the subject of your post to find followers…

• I posted the recent top 10 elephant blogs from last week, and I took a moment to see what subjects were relevant to those posts for the week. I ended up tagging: #sex #hotyoga #ethics #chewbacca and #elej…. I was tickled when I received two followings from this post from @sexandlovetips and @Chewbacca.. Chewbacca himself mentioned me in a post as a way to say hello:

@laurenfoste ruuuuhhrrurhn gruh. hruun euu uhrn: ghrrnn aaruuh ehrruh nruh! urau nurrh gahrrn

These are just my observations so far from using Twitter to promote my posts. My main observation is this: There are not so much conversations going on with Twitter, as there are relationships. That should be your focus when joining Twitter. The conversations will have to partake elsewhere in the relationship – on Facebook, on blogs, etc. I imagine if they recognize you from seeing you on Twitter, this will aid you when you join a conversation elsewhere on the social media web.

Have more observations? Share them below!