Twitter. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay. When I first signed up for my account I had several questions about Twitter:

• How do I use it?
• Is it really just people telling me what they’ve had for breakfast?
• Who shall I follow?
• Are there any rules?

I’ll admit that when I first started tweeting I was going about it all in the wrong way – I was advertising my services and not interacting with people. Now I know that the best way to use Twitter is to engage with other people, that is how you build up your follower count, come into contact with interesting people and learn more about these people. Would you rather have 500 good quality followers who are real and will talk with you, or 5,000 followers who never talk to you?

You also need to be interesting enough for people to want to interact with you. Instead of saying ‘I’m out shopping‘, say something like ‘I’m out shopping in [town] looking for [item], can anyone recommend where I can get the best deal’. You’ll be surprised at how quickly people start replying to you. Rather than making a statement, you are giving a bit of information about yourself and leaving the door open for others to join in the discussion.

In the early days I did not adopt this approach to Twitter and my follower numbers represented that – around 50 or so, most of which were spam-bots. Since changing the way I do things (helped greatly by this book) my follower count has steadily increased to almost 500.

Of course there are some unwritten rules that need to be adhered to, a selection of which are:

• No swearing – if you’re using it for business it’s not the best impression to give someone.
• Don’t overload people’s timelines with nonsense tweets.
• If you’ve nothing interesting to tweet, don’t tweet.
• If you want something re-tweeted, make sure that it is less than 120 characters.

What rules do you stick to when tweeting?

If you learn how to use Twitter more effectively, it can be a very rewarding and enjoyable place. If you are looking to learn more about Twitter I strongly recommend that you follow Mark Shaw and pay attention to what he has to say.