How To Make Twitter Work For You In 5 Minutes A Day

Justin, I couldn't help noticing you're following 4,873 people.

That's... a lot of people. I can't keep up with more than 400 follows, much less four thousand (I follow about 100 these days). My kneejerk reaction here is that you've leveraged Twitter effectively but that it's pretty one-sided. That is – you're getting plenty out of the deal, but since you can't really keep up with the people you follow, your Twitter presence ends up 99% self-promotional.

Which is okay, if your goals are strictly promotional.

It's worth pointing out, though, that you can derive a lot of value from Twitter by following only those people who say things that are interesting to you. That's the route I choose. As a result, my steam is filled with chatter about subjects I enjoy, people I like, articles that will interest me. I have conversations with people whose tweets catch my attention. I can count on it to serve as useful data pipe, which in the end, I value more than self-promotion. Of course, YMMV.

Hybrid approach for Twitter outsiders: Do Justin's thing for awhile, then after you hit your follower goal, start unfollowing every single person whose contributions don't improve your stream. If they're interesting but not useful on a regular basis, add them to lists. Keep culling your follows until you get under 200, then enjoy your new, always-on chatroom filled with cool people who say useful things.

That's how to use Twitter as a personal marketing tool, but I personally block and mark as spam every person like that who follows me.

Here's the real secret to making Twitter Work For You If You're A Real Person: follow people you know and like. Look at who they talk to, follow those people if they seem decent. Talk to the people you follow as if they're your actual friends, because if they're not already eventually they probably will be.

You won't get four thousand followers. You might get new opportunities and contacts, and actual meaningful relationships with people. A direct application of this tactic, applied in the days before Twitter and Facebook, managed to get me a wife, so I think I'm doing better than the OP.

One consequence of this behaviour is that you will only get the attention of people who use Twitter the way you do.

Some of us read all our tweets and only follow people who make this reasonable. We can't really follow people who post 10 times a day, so you're losing us as a potential audience. It's possible this is a worthwhile tradeoff.

Related plug: One of my side projects analyzes someone's Twitter account and tells you if you could reasonably follow them: http://www.unladenfollow.com/u/justinvincent

I'm a very casual Twitter user, but I have a question for the power users who are following thousands of people (Vincent, for example, is following close to 5,000 people).

Is that level of information even remotely manageable? How much of their feeds do you actually read, and how much of that is meaningful in any way (most likely lacking any context?)

And IF you're not really reading their feeds... is there any benefit to following them, other than the initial prompt for them to follow you back?

Justin, I have to admit, I unfollowed you a while ago for this very reason. I'm reading a lot of the same blogs and news sites as you do and was a bit annoyed by the fact that your tweets didn't had any sources ("via ..."). You could provide me with a great service providing pointers to great news sources instead of just copying their headlines. This would've helped me in search for content. The second problem is by spreading out the stories over the day, they became a bit out of date it felt a bit pivoting of information. I'm sorry.

Sorry, but this is exactly the kind of behaviour that will get me to unfollow you very quickly (or more likely avoid following you in the first place).

I read Hacker News and a bunch of other tech websites via RSS already. I have an RSS reader on my PC and my phone which I use to keep track of articles I find interesting. I really don't need yet another twitter user selecting their favourites and reposting them for me.

I like to follow people who actually create or add their own value rather than just duplicating a bunch of content that in all likely hood I've already seen.

Sure, the occasional "hey this cool [link]" tweet is fine, but 10 a day is just spam to me.

There are far too many people who do this, and it provides absolutely no value. Why would I be interested in 10+ links a day from somebody I don't know who is just picking his favorite articles from sites that I visit anyway?

Imagine if everybody on Twitter did this, it would be unmanagable. The most successful Twitter accounts (and in-turn, most followed blogs etc.) are people who write and produce original content. That is what I follow on Twitter and I assume most people in the HN audience would be doing the same.

I definitely think it's debatable whether or not this is the absolute best way to use Twitter for everyone - I don't like getting 10 tweets from someone a day. However, I really appreciate how well written and convincing this is and likewise, how you're able to "sell" your product without actually selling it. This is a prime example of providing value without expecting much in return. In exchange you're probably end up getting some users.

I find the most important aspect to make Twitter 'work' is to stay on topic - at least when you are starting out and trying to attract followers. If you run your twitter account as a 'stream of consciousness', I find that attracts much less followers.

Twitter discussion aside, this is one of the most compelling 'sales' posts I've seen in a long time.

It offers the reader something of value just for reading it, with the promise right there up front, and it introduces the product naturally as a solution to the difficulties that arise doing this by hand. The only think that seems to be missing is some kind of social proof.

Justin: great work! Can you post some feedback as to how it affects your signup rate in a week or two?

You mention "Tweet a link to something funny or informational that someone else created" - Is there a way you prevent from posting duplicate or similar items with the rest of the stream? I find that a lot of the twitter feed is the "most popular" items of the day or the most recent RSS updates (from HN, SAI, etc.), especially when the follower base is so focused.

Pricey for a personal account, but looks so amazing.