Finding Niche People To Follow On Twitter

I have been thinking about and working with Twitter a lot lately. A core competence you will need as you expand your social media presence on Twitter is the art of finding the right niche people to follow for you or your organization. Where do you start?

Try searching a few hash tags. These are ways people identify subjects they are referencing. If you have a local business in Cleveland you might search #Cleveland or #HappyinCle – this is a great way to find people associating themselves with Cleveland. Click on people’s names and if they appear to be in your niche, Follow them.

Next look for some Lists. These are fantastic tools that people have self-selected other people onto. Whatever your niche is, there are 50 Lists waiting for you. You can follow the List (so you remember it) and then select Following. Look at all of the accounts being followed. If you have found a good List there will be somewhere between 100 – 500 people on this list for you to follow. You are safe following 300 people in a day, anymore than that could get your account disabled for spambot like behavior. When you find someone interesting, check out the Lists they have been put on. This is a trail you can work on at any time.

Why do all of this dirty work? Following people in the niche you care about will get you followers in that area. How many? That depends on you. Build up your following at a reasonable pace and be patient – remember you will be capped at following 2001 people until you have 1,850 people following you back (Hi carpal tunnel syndrome, I have missed you). Deleting people not following you back is an unfortunate reality you will have to do until you have a massive number of followers. If you Re-Tweet the people you follow and interact with them, you increase the odds they will follow you back. Authentic interaction and conversation is critical to your success. Now that you have the basics on how to build up a following on Twitter, what are you going to do with it?