Twitter Ebook Not Needed

I can not believe that there are entire ebooks being written about Twitter.

Seriously?

I guess if you treat it as some sort of a contest, and feel the need to "get" as many "followers" as possible ... even though 90% of them will never actually read a word you said, or click any of your links ... then buying an ebook to find out what the latest and greatest automatic friend adding tools are, might be useful.

As for myself, I much prefer to take the "get rich slow" approach to building my twitter empire.

It may take me quite a while to get to 5000 followers ... heck, it might even take a while to hit 1000. But, my goal; rather than just having a big number next to my follower count, is instead, to have a decent percentage of the people who follow me, actually know who the heck I am.

With that in mind, here are Todd's common sense Twitter tips:

• Only follow people who write tweets that you are interested in reading.
• Make sure that at least a majority of your own tweets are likely to be useful or interesting for the people who follow you.

To be honest, that's it.

You don't need to buy an ebook, or a software program to follow those two simple rules.

And here's a little secret for you. Today so many other people ARE using those silly software programs that you don't even need to actively go out seeking interesting people.

Obviously go out and follow your friends, acquaintances, and "famous" people you are interested in. But when it comes to people you don't know yet, if you want to be really lazy about it, you can just sit back and wait for the notifications to come in about people who are following you. Then go check out their profile/stream, and only follow-back those who you find interesting.

Don't worry about the others. They weren't interested in YOU anyway.

I usually only follow back, about 10-20% of the people who follow me. And not surprisingly, a great majority of the people I choose not to follow, unfollow me within 2-3 days. That tells me all I needed to know about their motives ... I'm not hurt or demoralized in the least by their "rejection".

Just so you don't think I'm totally opposed to twitter tools, here are a couple that I do suggest ...

• Especially as you start to build up a larger group of friends, you are likely to find one of the desktop clients very helpful when it comes to staying organized. A lot of people are using tweetdeck. As for myself, I recently switched to seesmic decktop. I'd recommend either one.
• Mr Tweet - this service sends you occasional PMs with information about people who you are not yet following, that based on your twitter habits, Mr Tweet thinks you might find interesting. This can be used in addition to my previously mentioned "lazy" method of finding people to follow.
• The only other service I use right now, is one called TwitApps. It's more interesting than necessarily useful. Basically, I get an email everyday, with a detailed list of who is now following me, and who unfollowed me within the past day. This is how I got confirmation of my suspicion that many people who I don't quickly follow back, are likely to unfollow me within days.

Like I said, I'm never going to win any prizes for fastest growing twitter follower count. But if you believe as I do, that quality over quantity may have some merit with social networks like twitter, than hopefully you found this post to be helpful.

Todd