To me, Twitter seems to offer a lot of possibilities, but could also suck up your time and give you nothing in return.
Before joining up, I read a bit about how it all works. Matt Singley had a few interesting things to say about the strategies that people use to try and trick people into following them. The one that stuck in my mind was what he called the “Pump and dump” strategy, where someone would follow you until you followed them – whereupon they would promptly dump you.
They can gain a lot of followers this way, but from my point of view it’s not the best option. After all, why are you looking for followers? To make you feel loved? To make it seem like you have friends?
Here’s the thing. If you want people to be your friend, be interesting. Show honest interest in what they’re up to. Don’t pretend.
If you do that, pretty soon you ought to have a number of people who want to hang with you for real.
As far as my Twitter strategy is concerned, I’m broadcasting everything on my blog – including people I follow. Therefore, I’m going to be a bit careful about who I choose to follow. I’m also going to be fairly careful about what I tweet.
My criteria is simple: keep it interesting. That means useful and informative. There will be links to interesting sites, updates with what I’m doing (and what’s happening with the publishing business), and occasional interesting quotes.
I’ll keep your posted on how it goes.
