Twitter help - how do I get followers?

[strandedatseasonsgreetings]

Sorry I know people keep asking about Twitter but I could do with some help.

I joined a while ago and one of my FB friends (an old colleague) kindly became a follower. I forgot about it for a while and then went on it today and sent a twitter message to Krishna Guru Murthy (who was one of the slightly random people I decided to follow, just to see how it all worked).

Anyway - he is now following me and must think I am very sad to only have one other follower.

How do I get more?

And should I be writing lots of exciting tweets to keep him/others following me?

Ok. I'm following a few of you now but I use my real name on twitter. Is that an error?

So if now random people are following you - that's me!

no some folk use real names. I prefer not to as I talk crap most of the time

Ha ha - I'm not on there much tbh, plus I flounce every 6 months ( i'm worse than Stephen Fry )

Oh sorry cyb - I shouldn't be rude not like I tweeted anything interesting or anything!

And plus you did see Sarah Lancashire!

Hey stranded I'm following you now!
I was GrumpyWhenWoken, which I am, but it took up too many characters. I couldn't be Dollytwat because there is another Dolly and she bullied persuaded me to change!

I use it for business aswell so I'm me and I'm also me on there

daftpunk you use to moan about it so much on here lol

Right, so who's Dollytwat?

ok twitter etiquette - do you use your children's names for example? Or dd1 etc like on MN? If I retweet will anyone but the person I retweet to read it? Do you mention placenames etc?

No, I call him 'the child' or 'little ed' (not his name)

I still moan about it - i think it's full of egotistical people who are, on the whole, quite boring - however, there are a few people on there I like and that's what sucks me back in. I don't follow many people - ( never followed more than 100 ) And i'm very fussy about who I follow ( don't really "do" mumsnetters)
Plus I only have people following me who I talk to a lot ( apart from the foreign office and the Daily Mirror. - not quite sure why they follow me ?)

PS;

I hope that didn't come across as rude - re: M'Netters - i just can't see the point in having loads of them on twitter - I come here to talk to you - I don't want you everywhere.

daftpunk - what the WHOLE FCO folowing you? Or one part of it (totally out of how these things work...it's not like it was in my day).

am always looking for new followers/people to follow.

Imo twitter is better than facebook because it is just opinion on the whole without the farmville/photos/inane crap games etc that appear on facebook.

And some of it can be of interest - I follow quite a lot of news outlets for instance and often will see breaking news on twitter before it appears on tv/the radio.

Anyone feel free to follow me - I'm @clairerandall

wannabe - I was drawn into it because of the wikileaks thing, but I'm struggling a bit to understand what everyone is on about as there's all these @ and #'s....I think I need to get used to it.

Also slightly worried as I already waste far too much time on MN, FB and now Twitter.

On the other hand if I ever finish writing the novel I should be writing when I am on MN, FB and now Twitter and by some miracle ever got a publisher (in my dreams) at least I would already know how to use these tools to publicise it.

You can follow me @nannynick
I follow several Mumsnetters, plus people in my local area, and people they inturn follow.

To find local people, people are currently tweeting about the snow. So you can use uksnowmap.com/ to see tweets in your local area about the snow, then follow them. They may or may not follow you back.

Some days I post quite often on Twitter (such as a day I did a day-in-the-life of a Nanny) and other days I may only post once or twice.
Twitter is handy for local information, so I would suggest concentrating on finding other local people and chatting with them. Also finding products - I've brought various things which I first heard about on Twitter. Always good to be able to chat with the creator of a product.

I learnt to use Twitter by reading a guide by someone local to me... Simple Tweet Guide by @LucasBlack - since reading his guide, then following him, then sending him a tweet, we have actually physically met (have done a couple of runs in local woodland to keep fit).

Initially just try to comment on other things people tweet about. They may ignore you, or they may start a conversation with you.

That was lovely NN. - thank you

nannynick - thanks that's really helpful I will have a read of that guide.

Unfortunately no snow where I am as I live in the Caribbean (for another few weeks at least) but I get the point!

Keep in mind that people will also comment on things you write. So just tweet about anything on your mind. Don't start with an @username - as without an @ at the beginning Anyone can see your tweet - which in turn means there are lots more people who may get to see it and thus comment on it.

Hi! I'm on there too. I go through phases of posting regularly and then may not get on for a week! I do prefer it to the status updates on FB. Only 140 characters so more to the point!

Good to hear you get the point - even if that site can't be of help to you where you live currently. Using a Twitter Client I find is much better than using the twitter website. TweetDeck is popular and runs on various systems.

I have 2 accounts, one in my real name where I have about 3 followers and where I follow mainly politics and news type things and another in my mn name where I follow mainly other mums netters and it's more chatty. I join in on that one a bit more. I'm a bit more comfortable posting inane stuff in my mumsnet name because it's incognito. I have a fear of future employers searching for my Twitter account, which is probably irrational but means I can be a bit more open about what I say!

I'm now following a few of you, I'm @monicayourcall, but I'm more of a lurker than a tweeter right now.

There was mention the other week about "professional" twittering (people being paid to do their bit to promote various items / views / campaigns).

While I appreciate there is nothing to force people to follow someone, or view a Facebook page, it will only be a matter of time before someone casually discloses how much they enjoyed being given a gift of and later, when views on might be asked for (eg on MN) then an innocent party will comment that they "saw some message about it being worth a score of '11 out of 10, as it was so good' " and thus 'paid-for' - but - subtle advertising will be seen to work, and be increased.

Much like 'viral marketing' and using Facebook (though some campaigns have backfired in a spectacular manner), the young 'creatives' inside the M25 will be rubbing their hands with million pound contracts to use FB, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and so on, and will manipulate the public by handing out 50s and 100s of pounds to their "social network active" friends, and hiring each other (to help 'use up' the remaining 750,000).

Google are getting ready to fight back with Google Places/ Boost/ Tags, to add more ways to show someone looking at (for example) maps, to get 'local' ads, even if they really don't want them!

(last comment was in response to stranded's at 21:50 - had planned it to be shorter!)