Twitter - How To Effectively Use it For Networking

You have no doubt already heard of the social networking site Twitter, which, despite only having being around a relatively short period of time, is now one of the most popular sites on the whole of the Internet. Despite the opinions of many online marketers, who dismiss Twitter as nothing but a waste of time, it has proven to be a useful tool in the marketer's toolbox for driving traffic and networking with fellow marketers, or people with similar interests.

The first step to taking advantage of the benefits that it offers is to follow, and be followed, by those with the same interests as you. Don't limit yourself to just those people who you actually know, anyone who operates in the same niche or niches as you is an option.

Having gotten yourself a decent amount of followers, the next step is to start tweeting. Bear in mind that when you tweet, self promotion isn't the aim - always think about what your can genuinely offer others. There have been many spoofs of Twitter in the form of comics and videos which comment on how some people like to tweet about their everyday lives. If you want to brand yourself as someone knowledgeable and whom it would be desirable to follow, then you'll need to be able to provide value to your followers as well as potential followers.

You'll find that there are plenty tools around too to help you get even more from Twitter. Some of these tools provide options to automate some of your Twitter activities, such as automatically following those who follow you, or automatically sending welcome messages to those who follow you. Be wary of automating too much though as the whole point of Twitter is that it is a 'social' site, and the parts of it you automate the less interaction you have with other Twitter users. Still, there are some great tools out there, the best of which you can find by simply searching for 'twitter tools' on a search engine.

As well as simply sending information out to your followers, Twitter is great for building new contacts by getting involved in conversations and answering others questions. If someone makes an interesting tweet, then tweet back that you found their tweet helpful and maybe add something to what they originally tweeted. Or, if someone tweets about something that you don't know about that, then tweet back to ask them for more details on it.

If you tweet and interact with certain individuals long enough, they'll start trusting and respecting you. Then, once others see that you are an active and valuable Twitter user, they will start interacting with you too, and a viral networking effect results. The consequence being that once you have built a small network on Twitter, and are an active user, your follower base will start to grow significantly without any specific additional efforts by you. When people see something funny, it is common to tell a friend about it as soon as possible. It is kind of the same principle on Twitter. When serious Twitter users see something cool, they'll tweet about it. When they find someone worth following, they'll recommend that their followers follow this person as well.