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Updated January 28, 2020If youโve just signed up for a Twitter account or dusted off an old one, beginning to tweet can feel like shouting into the abyss. Heads up: it is. If youโre starting from zero with only a few followers, itโs unlikely your tweets will be seen or youโll get any feedback that will compel you to keep sharing. Posting on Twitter is a positive feedback loop where positive interactions drive you to share more. Instead of starting from scratch, build a small initial following by tapping into your existing networks.
These strategies wonโt net you thousands of followers, but theyโll give you an initial boost of viewership so youโre not yelling at the wind. You will hone the people you follow on Twitter over time; this is simply a starting point to get over the mental barrier of tweeting to nobody. Donโt feel bad about eventually pruning your list and deleting people.
How to follow people on Twitter.
If you belong to professional online communities, follow fellow community members on Twitter. โOnline communitiesโ may sound ephemeral, and โprofessional online communitiesโ may sound extremely lame. But the best of these are gathering places for people with shared passions, interests, and experiencesโand they absolutely have the power to help you in your career. They can be a good way to stay abreast of whatโs happening in your industry, meet professionals peers, and find new opportunities.
You can find these communities in a number of ways:
Google phrases like โtop online communities for developersโ; โSlack groups for designers in San Franciscoโ; or โFacebook groups for freelance writers.โ Youโll often find articles that list several groups for your area of interest.
Use the search query on sites like Facebook or Linkedin to find relevant groups on those platforms.
Ask friends and colleagues about the professional online communities they belong to and have found value in.
Online communities you can consider joining and eventually following its members include:
Slack Groups (like DevChat)
Facebook Groups (like Tech Ladies)
Discord Groups (like #blacktechpipeline)
Some communities are open to anyone, while others may require you to answer a few questions about your interest in the community or apply in some other way before allowing you to join. Most online communities are free to join, but some may require a one-time or monthly subscription fee. Additionally, while many online communities are global, you can also find communities with people in your specific city or state by adapting your search queries.
โimportantโ Itโs wise to use the same image, handle, and name if possible across platforms to help people become familiar with you and your presence in and across communities.
To translate these community connections to Twitter, you might start a thread or topic where you ask everyone to share their handles. You can also check to see if this thread already existsโit is not uncommon or strange to do so. People who enjoy each otherโs online company in one community often want to follow each other on other parts of the web.
Depending on your industry, your colleagues and industry peers may be active on Twitter and are likely to follow you back. Follow the people you work with as well as individuals you may know through previous roles, industry meetings, and more. Often people name the Twitter handle of the company they work at in their bio, so search something like (โ@intelโ) for people who may work at your company.
If you attend a few conferences or events each year, youโll meet interesting people that you can follow online. Often there will be a conference Slack group where everyone attending can chat. A link and instructions to join this group are typically provided in an email after event registration, generally weeks before an event is slated to start. Join it. Add folks to Twitter that youโre looking forward to meeting or youโve had interesting conversations with. If youโre at a larger event, temporarily add it directly to your name on Twitter.
For example, if your Twitter name is normally โAlfred Lin,โ change it to โAlfred Lin at Cool Eng Event Dec 6-10โ so people know youโre going. You might also temporarily pin a tweet to your profile about being there.
Life is about relationships with people. Itโs about building things together and exploring ideas others have and integrating them into your ideas about the world. So, if you want to connect with people, you need to be a person, not a robot. People are messy, they have mundane parts of their life like waiting for their friends to get ready, they get frustrated in traffic, and they have good ideas that are wise and witty and worthy of many retweets.Andy Sparks (@SparksZilla), co-founder and CEO, Holloway*
Posting on Twitter initially feels daunting. People will judge your feed based on what you post and will make quick decisionsโon whether to follow you, message you, hire you, and work with youโbased on your presence on Twitter. Like anything else, it gets easier the more you do it.
You might think of Twitter as your online storybook and resume, showing people who you are and what you do. On Twitter, your title, current company, and even past jobs might be considered when people choose to follow you or not, but theyโre not the most important factor. Instead, itโs how you explain what youโre working on, thinking about, and interested in that will help you connect with others in a meaningful way and lead to potential opportunities. Whether itโs true or not, an inactive feed or one filled with retweets can signal that youโre not doing much. Making Twitter work for you, personally and professionally, relies on you sharing aspects of your work and life, your original insights, and the ideas youโre exploring.