9 Ways To Build A Twitter Community With Substance

Ah, Twitter. I keep seeing all these people saying “Yay! 1,000 followers!”. And then I get sad, because I think they’re really missing the point. Connecting with people is great, but don’t you want to connect with people who will enrich your experience overall?

Everyone uses Twitter differently and I get that. But I know what’s worked for me. Much of it hasn’t been deliberate or engineered, it’s just what makes natural sense to me. But in case there’s a tip or two in here, I agreed to post about my thoughts on building community on Twitter.

Earlier this week, I tweeted that trying to find value in 1,500 followers was like trying to remember the license plate numbers of cars speeding past you on the highway. In a similar fashion, finding a good article posted by someone in Twitter is a random act if your looking to find good content in Twitter.

Someone teased me this week about not following people back in Twitter. Personally, I stopped caring about following and followers a long time ago. I’d be happier interacting with 12 thought leaders on Twitter than having 1,200 followers — in fact, I don’t even look at my home feed of what my follows are saying or producing. When I want to know what people think, I search for their views on that topic using Tweetmeme…

Quite frankly, my only purpose in following is that I want to direct message someone in a private message — other than that, I don’t mine followers/followees so following is just not important to me unless the person is really important to me and like a real business relationship or friendship that takes time. As a result, I’m dropping — not adding — my follows to simplify my life.

The important thing about Twitter — like any tool — is that how you use it makes sense for you! Oh, and I’m sorry but I kind of went off on a rant here. If you want to know the 9 ways, you can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in learning more…