1. Twitter: How to Build Your Network
When building your network on Twitter the first thing you want to do is observe:
• Find others who you think would do a good job at using Twitter.
• Watch how they interact on Twitter for a couple of days. Look at how they
Tweet, the type of information they Tweet and how they interact on the system.
• Start Tweeting before getting followers.
When you are observing others on Twitter it is recommended that you do this for a
couple of days in a passive manner. The reason for this is you do not want to add these
people to your network too early because if you have not built up your own tweets, others
might not want to follow you back because they will no have a good sense of the type of
information that you will be providing.
You want a good base of tweets that position what you are all about and what information
you are putting out there. Aim for ten tweets. You want there to be a steady rate of tweets
so do not post your ten tweets all at once. Take five days and tweet twice a day. Then
start building your network.
Getting Started
1. Go to Twitter’s home page. You can do this by typing “twitter.com” in the
address bar.
2. Sign in to your account by clicking the “Sign In” button located at the top right.
3. Enter your username and password and click “Sign In.”
Different Ways to Build Your Network:
Start Following Other People
The first way is to start following people that have interesting things to say and who you
think will want to follow your back. It is general etiquette in the Twitter sphere that if
someone follows you you follow them back.
4. To start following people click on “Find People” at the top of your profile page.
5. You will now see a number of tabs such as “Browse Suggestions”, “Find
Friends”, etc. We will now go through these tabs starting at the far left.
Browse Suggestions
In terms of actually finding people it is not recommended to go through this section to
add followers to your network.
However, this is a good place to start if you want to identify popular Twitter Users and
2. observe them. Click on any of the topics listed on the left hand side and you will be
presented with the most popular and largest Twitter individuals. This is a good place to
see how Twitter accounts interact on this system.
Find Friends
If you use Gmail, Yahoo mail, or AOL mail, this section will allow you to access all your
contacts in these accounts and let you see if any of your contacts are Twitter users.
Invite By Mail
If you do not use any of the above mentioned email accounts, then you want to use the
“Invite by Mail” tab.
6. Enter the email addresses of your contacts from your email database and list them
in the box provided by separating them with commas.
7. Click the blue button at the bottom of the box. This will send out an email to all
the addresses you entered. This email will either be an invitation for them to
follow you on Twitter, or if they do not have a Twitter account the email will be
an invitation for them to sign up with Twitter and follow you.
Note: It is not a bad thing to use to send word out to your email database that you are
on Twitter. There is some value in having your contacts see that you are involved in
these cool new social networks.
Find On Twitter
The other way you can find people to follow is in this section, where you can type in the
name of an individual and see if they are on Twitter. If they are on Twitter, you want to
follow them first. This is because if you have good quality info in your Twitter feed, they
will want to follow you back so that they can get your information sent to them on a
regular basis.
8. Type in the name of an individual in the given space.
9. Look through the search results and identify the person you are looking for by
their name and picture.
10. Click on their username.
11. Look through the person’s tweets and see if their information interests you. The
reason you follow them first is so you get access to their tweets on an ongoing
basis. If they are a responsible Twitter user they will follow you back.
12. If you want to follow them, click on the “Follow” button at the top left corner of
their profile page (located under their username and picture).
3. Following People Through Your Followers
The final way of adding people to your network is by going through your followers and
seeing who they are following. The idea is to find the friends of your friends. This is a
good idea because the friends of your friends probably have the same interests as you and
are in the same industry as you are, so it is a good way to expand your network and
sphere of influence.
1. Click on “Profile” located in the bar at the top right of the page.
2. On the right hand side of your profile it will give you the number of followers you
have and the number of people that are following you.
3. Click on “followers” to see a list of all of the people that are following your
tweets.
4. Click on one of their names on the list.
5. Just as with your profile, on your follower’s profile you will also see (on the right
hand side) the number of people that are following them, and the number of
people that they themselves are following.
6. Click on “following” to see a list of their friends.
7. Scan through the list, you can either click on their username and scan through
their tweets to see if you are interested in following them, or you can choose to
follow them straight from the list by clicking on the first of the three icons that are
shown beside their username.
Note: It is important to remember that in order to build your network you want to be sure
to be having good quality information going out in your own tweets. You also have to
start following other people because the general etiquette on Twitter is that when you
follow others, they will start following you back.