What is twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging website or service. What micro-blogging means is that it is a site where you can blog but you are limited to 140 characters or less.

In 140 characters you need to convey the message that you want. Usually it’s something short, like what you’re having for lunch, the plane they just crashed off the runway, or the pictures of the terrorists in Mumbai.

Who uses twitter?

Twitter has a global reach, which is one of its strengths. The way it works is like this, after you sign up for an account, you can then start following people, and people can start following you.

How do you choose people to follow?

Your criteria for choosing who to follow, is something that is personal to you.

Perhaps you want to follow people that are celebrities such as MC Hammer, Shaquille O’Neal, Lance Armstrong, or maybe you just want to follow someone that is a friend of yours or perhaps you want to do a mixture, or even perhaps you want to follow just marketers.

Whichever way that you choose to do it’s entirely up to you as far as what you’re following criteria is going to be.

How do I get people to follow me?

As far as getting people to follow you, here are some tips:

• Don’t spam: what I mean by this is don’t only send out offers to join your list, articles related to just marketing, or only send out tweets that relate to your business. Nobody cares. The people on twitter generally care about the people on twitter, not necessarily the people on twitter’s business.
• Be engaging: Like I just mentioned, the people on twitter are interested in the people twitter. So say something interesting, be yourself just don’t be a marketing robot.
• Be entertaining: say something fun, refer people to a fun website, the more fun you are the more people will follow you.
• The number of followers is not a scorecard: it doesn’t matter if you have 10,000 followers, 50 followers or 10 followers. Each one of those followers is a person and is a person that you should try to interact with.

These are just some general tips. Think of these as a 10,000 foot overview of guidelines that I feel will help your twitter experience. Remember, it’s all about being social. Twitter has been described as a worldwide cocktail party, treat it as such.