Using Twitter For Your Business: Getting Followers

Twitter is a lot like Active Rain and other blogging communities in the fact that it becomes more beneficial and useful to you when you give value to others through your posts. One great way to get started on Twitter and to establish a strong following is to put some value into your tweets, just like you do your blogs. And just like with blogging, people will start to follow you IF you provide them with something meaningful and insightful on a topic that interests them.

As with blogging, tweeting is an investment and it may take awhile for followers to trickle in. As you continue to provide useful tweets, you can also use the various tools out there to find people that you know, people that you are interested in knowing, users with similar interests, or businesses and organizations that you would like to follow.  Once you find people with like interests, check out their tweets and decide if you want to follow them.

14 Tools For Finding People on Twitter:

1. Twitter People Search: First find out if anyone you know is on Twitter. Twitter People Search is a good place to start your search for friends. After you have signed into Twitter, simply click on “Find People” at the top of the page. From there you have four choices; you can “Browse Suggestions” of people to follow by your category of interest, “Find Friends” from your email address book who are Twitter users, “Invite By Email” anyone that you cannot find on Twitter, or “Find On Twitter” anyone you know by simply typing in their name. This also works for finding organizations and companies.

2. Monitter:  “A Twitter Monitor” or a real-time tracking tool for finding new people to follow. You can type three keywords into separate search boxes and watch the relevant tweets stream in on one page.  You can narrow it down to tweets within a certain distance of a zip code as well.  I like the simple easy to read format.

3. Tweepz:  Another Twitter search engine to find people based on a certain search word. Search results are in an easy-to-read format.
4. TweepSearch:
   Type in a name or keyword to find Twitter users.
5. TwitteRel:
   Find Twitter users with the same interests.  Easy to use, simply type in a keyword and find twitters who “tweeped” about this keyword.  You can also follow twitters while in twitteRel.
   
6. Twubble:
   Easy to use and useful Twitter extension that helps you find more friends from the followers that you have.  “It searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.”
7. Twellow:
   “The Twitter Yellow Pages.”  Search for someone on Twitter or browse through tweet categories. Super easy to use! Check out Twellowhood where you can narrow down to cities. I did my hometown of Litchfield Park, Arizona and got 75 matches.  Now I’m going to go through and see if any have similar interests or interesting tweets and possibly follow them.
8. Just Tweet It:
   “find other Twitter users just like you!”  A directory for Twitter users. Makes it easier for tweeters to find other tweeters with similar interests.
9. Twitscoop:
   Input a twitter username or keyword in the Twitscoop search box and track a conversation, topic or conference.  You can send tweets, receive tweets and find new friends on Twitscoop.
   
10. Nearby Tweets:
    Helps you find out who is tweeting close to your location.
11. twitSeeker:
    An alternative search engine for finding Twitter users and browsing the results in one interface.
12. TwitDir:
    “A Twitter Directory” that also allows you to see the Top 100 followed, Top 100 Updaters, Topp 100 followers and more…
13. Twitter Troll:
    Use Twitter Troll to quickly search for Twitter posts about a certain topic and find new friends, all in real-time.
14. Geofollow:  The original Geo location based Twitter Directory.  Twitter users are listed by location, tags and interests.

If you have a favorite and effective way of finding twitters, please feel free to add it in the comment section, I'd love to hear your ideas! 

Happy Tweeting :)

Cinda Rose
REALTOR ®, SFR, CSSN 
The West Valley Home Team 
at Welcome Home Realty
Phone:  623-252-9350
    Fax:  623-505-9435
cinda.rose@thewestvalleyhometeam.com
www.TheWestValleyHomeTeam.com