A little bird told me………7 steps to using Twitter – part 1

The first time I got in to Twitter I ended up worse than a crack addict! It became a huge time suck and I did not feel much benefit – so I stopped, got busy and did little. Then I read Mitch Joels book Six Pixels of Separation I picked up on Twitter again. Great recommended book for anyone thinking of using Web 2.0 for their business.

I am sure everyone will have different opinions about how to use Twitter but here are the first 3 points of my 7 point plan (the other 4 will be posted tomorrow).

The success of Twitter has spawned a 1001 applications, I like Hootsuite as my main one because it has all that I need in one place and allows me to cross post when I want to Facebook and LinkedIn, but others again may have different ideas.

1. I have set up keyword searches for all terms I am interested in, mainly around personal branding, also ones with my name and company name. Once a day (sometimes more) I check those posts and spend a few minutes scanning those, checking profiles and retweeting as needed. Overnight it builds a little more so I end up sometime in the morning doing a slightly longer scanscan.

2. As part of my connection to a personal branding group we are retweeting certain colleagues posts each week and I set those up in advance for timed delivery sometime the next week. Takes less than 5 minutes per week - very easy.

3. Applications also approve new followers for me but then keeps a record and I can go in anytime to vet those followers and block them if I do not want them as followers, ignore them if I want them as a follower but have no interest in their tweets or report them as spammers. I so this couple of times a week, very easy to do too. You can also set it up that when it does Approve someone they automtically get a nice note saying thanks for following.

Watch this blog for the other 4 steps tomorrow

How do you use Twitter for your business or career? Add your toonies worth below.