Twitter Tip: Finding People to Follow

For the last few weeks I've be keeping a list of twitter tools that are helpful for finding people to follow. And today I've seen several references to finding people on twitter from Mari Smith and Rich Brooks.

Often when starting on twitter, it can seem confusing to try and figure who you should be or would like to be following. Why do you want to follow people? It's the best way to meet cool, smart, influential people AND sometimes they follow you back! :-)

My first suggestion is to follow influential people in your industry, your clients and customers, vendors, competitors, colleagues and friends. You can use the search feature on your twitter profile (upper right, click on Find People).

Then there are the tools that help you hone in on more people to add to your list...

Nearbytweets.com (see Rich Brooks' post) helps you find people near you, or any location and you can filter by keyword along with the location. So I may look for people in Los Angeles who are tweeting about "business blogging." Then, I study their profile and decide whether or not 1) I want to follow and 2) if I have anything I can add to the conversation.

Twellow.com is like the yellow pages for Twitter. First, make sure you add your own profile to the site. Then you can search by profession to find people who may match your ideal client criteria or who are experts in your niche you whom you want to watch and get to know.

Tweepi.com I learned about yesterday via Twitip.com. This site makes it super easy for you to find and follow people who follow OTHER popular people. You can input someone's twitter ID and use a variety of filters to find all the people following that person. Then you can evaluate who you want to follow in turn. You can organize the displayed info by number of followers and how much they retweet, for example. One click and you can follow 20 people at a time from the list.

TweepML.org is a site where people make lists or groups of twitter users. This is a fast way to follow people with similar interests. Recently I did search on restaurants in Los Angeles. I was really surprised at how many restaurants are using twitter and again, with one click, I could immediately start following all the local eateries. Search on a keyword, find a list, check out the peeps and follow.

MrTweet.com is one of my favorite sites because you can recommend your favorite tweeple for others to follow AND based on who you're following, the site provides recommendation of people for you to follow. I've learned about a lot of interesting, smart people from the recommendations feature.

Once you've got a good list of people you're following, then it's time to participate: converse, connect and add value.

Related Posts:

Twitter Tips for Business Continued...

Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Productivity - Part 1

Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Productivity - Part 2

Video on Twitter is Getting Easier

Sharing Photos on Twitter

Finally, let's connect on twitter!

Comments

[ray]

Using those tools risk you to invite fake/spam/phish accounts. I'd rather add people that I know, or people that can help me and vice versa. Great tips by the way, and let me add you up in twitter =]

[soekershof]

Thanks for the tips. We figured out quite a few things ourselves as well. It's all about 'follow' or 'being followed'
First we started with @soekershof and used 'twollow', 'wefollow' etc. That became a mess and we hardly use this account. You see people with 15000 or more followers and themselves they follow even more.
With @Donkerbok and @greencathedral we learned to do things different. We only follow the interesting ones but have, relatively, many followers. After each message we use the # sign. with subjects related to our market. In our case #cape town #garden #south africa #travel etc. etc. Via hootsuite, tweetdeck, etc. twitter users are filtering their subjects. People with, for example interest in gardens in South Africa select thus all relevant tweets.
An upmarket restaurant in Brooklyn New York can tweet with the addition #New York #restaurant #Michelin #Brooklyn etc.
It's also the way we find people/businesses we want to follow ourselves.
It's a slightly different approach but it prevents 'pollution'.

Enjoy tweeting and blogging but above all Enjoy Life
(our life is full of cactus but we don't sit on it)

Herman & Yvonne

[bpc.bpc5@gmail.com]

Hi,
It was a very nice article! Just want to say thank you for the information you have shared. Just continue writing this kind of post. Thanks.

[isourcebiz@yahoo.com]

Hi,
What an amazing tips to find our friends. Twitter is an amazing application. I really like it. Thanks for sharing these twitter tips. I was not familiar with this and from now, I’ll try them and will go through these sites you have shared. Keep up the good work.