Twitip

by Nathan Hangen – Follow him @nhangen.

I like to compare Twitter to a new relationship. At first, you are interested, but your guard is up. However, as time goes by, you find yourself spending more and more time together until the relationship blossoms and takes on a life of its own. Twitter has a great way of pulling you in like this in a way that no other social network can. Everyone seems warm and friendly and you quickly find that you can take your guard down and start talking with people from all over the world as if they were a guest in your home.

I love Twitter for this reason because it seems that it has never been easier to build so many relationships so quickly. This is really something most of us, unless we are celebrities, have never had to face before. That is, having to deal with thousands of friends at once. At first, a few hundred friends are easy to manage, but soon you have a list of thousands that you have to sort through. It can become a daunting task trying to keep up with everyone, much less interact with them. This is why I don’t think I’d be able to use Twitter without TweetDeck and why I think that the following advice just might save the Twitter interaction that you’ve come to love.

What we are going to do is turn a normal Twitter feed into something that is easy to use and makes interacting with people much easier. If you don’t have TweetDeck, then I highly recommend that you go and grab it now before you finish reading this post. Although Twhirl does come in handy for certain tasks, in my opinion, nothing works as seamlessly with Twitter as TweetDeck does.

Separate Your Follows

The first thing we are going to do is take a single Twitter feed and make it manageable by using groups to filter the people you follow. Since Tweet Deck only lets you have 10 panes open, I’d like to save a few for brand and personal searches. So in this instance, we are only going to add 3 groups. When you first install Tweet Deck, you’ll have a pane for friends, replies, DM’s, and a TwitScoop Window. This will leave you with 3 open panes for anything you wish down the road.

For now, I’d like to use the following strategy:

1. Create a group for friends that you either interact with often or who’s Tweets you don’t want to miss. You can call this group friends, associates, network, or any other name that you choose. We’ll use this group to highlight peers and associates so that you can reply and RT easily.

2. Create a group for new followers or people you would like to follow you. I like to use this group as a reminder to interact with people I haven’t really had a chance to meet yet. Sure, most people send auto-DM’s, but that isn’t really interacting. Although you will make an effort to monitor and interact with this group more than normal, the goal is to eventually move them to your friends group or the main “All Friends” pane.

3. Although it might sound corny, I also like to create a group for what I call “gurus” or “experts.” This group is usually relatively small, but this is the group where I place content experts. For instance, guys like @ChrisBrogan, @DarrenRowse, or @TonyRobbins will go here. Since I find it to be a good practice to keep up on what the experts are saying, this allows me to easily keep up with industry trends.

How to Use these Groups

Now that we’ve created these three groups, I’d like to share my strategy for using them. The first group is fairly obvious…you will reply and RT with your friends, trying to keep up while also bringing others into the conversation. I like to build my network by meeting the people that my friends hang out with and this is a great way to do so. Just watch for common names and you’ll start to recognize the names rather easily. Tweet Deck makes it really simple to follow them too, just click the name and then hit the follow button.

Another reason that this group works well is that Twitter seems to lose replies and DM’s rather often. Having the people most likely to send a reply to you in their own pane makes it easy to check for missed Tweets on other feeds.

To be honest, the second group strategy is a new tactic that I started using only recently. However, I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and it has really made it easier to expand my interaction on Twitter. Most of the time when you add a new follower they get lost in the Twitter stream pretty quickly. Eventually, you forget who you just met and who you’ve had on your list for longer periods. Having a separate pane of new friends makes it much easier to build relationships with them. Some of my favorite people on Twitter started out as new fans. People will instantly appreciate the fact that you’ve reached out to them and once you’ve done that it becomes much easier to build trust.

The last group of “gurus” or “experts” comes in handy for finding posts to RT or read. I also learn who they interact with on a regular basis, at which point I make an attempt to reply to or follow them. Although many of these people have tens of thousands of followers and don’t really have time to reply to everyone, if you make an attempt to reply every now and then they might recognize your name. This is the first step to getting noticed, which can lead to networking, guest posting, or joint venture opportunities. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you spam this list, just keep it handy for staying up to date on industry trends and other people that you might want to follow.

Additional Twitter Tips

No Twitter post would be complete without some additional networking tactics and some Twitter etiquette to follow, so I’d like to offer just a few more tips that might help you improve your Twitter experience.

The first rule of thumb is that if you want to get noticed, then you need to help others get noticed. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to constantly be bombarded with self-made experts telling you how great they are hoping that you’ll believe it. I also grow tired of watching people spam their own links. If you really want to get noticed on Twitter, then you should help others get noticed first. Spend some time recommending people to your followers, whether it be a blog post, website, or a general follow recommendation. Many of the people that do well on Twitter spend more time giving than getting, so do your part to lift others up if you expect them to do the same for you.

Next, if you send an auto-DM or a Tweet that says you’ll do something, then back it up. If you say you’ll read a blog post, then do it and comment back about it. Don’t try and pull a fast one hoping that people will read your links anyway. This just isn’t a good way to do business and eventually someone will ask for your opinion. It also really bugs me when people send an auto-DM that asks about you, but when you reply they ignore your response. Sure, sometimes replies get lost, but don’t let that be your excuse. If you want to build a network on Twitter, then you need to stand by your word and do what you say. No one likes a liar.

Overall, I think most people have good intentions with Twitter, but there are always a few bad apples that spoil the bunch. Reaching out to others is a great way to build a group of fans and filtering your Twitter feed is a great way to do this. The key to using any social tool effectively is being able to access as much information as you can in as little time as possible. Tweet Deck groups make this incredibly easy and I think once you try these three techniques, you’ll find all sorts of new ways to use Twitter. Just make sure you share them with me when you get the chance!