Archive for January 10th, 2010

I’ve been helping my mother with her new twitter account, which was an interesting experience since she knew almost nothing about the application. She had set up her account, written a bio, uploaded a picture and was following 2 people with about 20 following.

“Why don’t I have more following?” she said.

“For one thing, you haven’t got a full page of posts,” I explained. “You’ve only got 7. That means people don’t know if you’re serious yet. They want to see about 20 posts before they start adding you. Another thing is you haven’t added anyone. People tend to add you back when you add them. If you don’t add them, they may never find out about you.”

“So what should I do?”

“Add some people.”

“How do I know who to add?”

“Search on what you’re interested in.”  We did that. She has a couple of topics.  I hit the search and began scrolling through the accounts, looking for the live ones.

“How do you know not to add those first three people?”

“Anyone that talks about money or millionare or any other things that smacks of MLM is out. Large companies are out. You don’t want someone promoting a product. You want real people who interact. Look, here’s one.” It was a guy who was talking about the Cowboys game.

“Is that all I need to know?”

“No, you’ve got to know how to retweet and how to reply.” That has gotten easier since I joined about a year ago, I noticed. We covered that — just hit the keys beside the posts to retweet or reply.I showed her how she might phrase an effort to interact. For example, she might talk about the Cowboys game with the guy who posted on that.

“Of course, he may or may not answer,” I told her. “You can’t take it personally if they don’t. And retweet interesting posts. People will really appreciate it and you’ll build your network.”

She was getting ready to leave. “I hope this isn’t overwhelming.” I said.

“No, that helps a lot.”

She went out the door. I wondered if I had taught her enough. I will check back on her profile in a day or two. And that will get me back on Twitter, where I haven’t been since I started teaching.

I’d love to tell you what her account is, but I can’t for reasons of my own anonymity efforts. Just say she’s a lady about town in Cowtown, like ten thousand others, and leave it at that.