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?

I'm @LilMsHissyFit, got sucked into twitter xfactor bitchfest by @mummybarrow, there are loads of MNers there...

Ok it's getting easier but not yet worked out "tweetdeck". thanks to the guide from nannynick. But if I put @at the beginning does that mean only that person can see it or everyone can see it but they know it's meant for one person only?

They see it, plus all their followers see it.
You see it, plus all your followers see it.

I think!

For tweetdeck. Initially just use All Friends, Mentions, Direct Messages columns.

Replies to you will be in Mentions. People you follow will be in All Friends. Personal messages appear in Direct Messages.

It is useful as when you log in it will show you the last x number of replies... so you can see who has replied to you whilst you have been away/asleep.

I'm following everyone who's posted their Twitter name on here!

If you want to follow me, I'm @TheRealBIWI

Tweetdeck is the best way to twitter if you're on a PC/laptop, but the Twitter app for iPhone is really good.

BecauseI'mworthit I'm already following you (sounds so like a cult this I struggle with the term following) but I keep thinking you are a now defunct west Indian airline

Nannynick - thanks, I will try it out and see what happens (perhaps not tonight as margarita starting to make me see double...)

Hah! I was going to shorten my name, formally, to BIWI but it reminded me too much of the airline. We had the worst flight ever to Barbados years ago with them. Had to share a newspaper, pay for drinnks, no individual in-flight entertainment and refused a blanket on an overnight flight!

Ah you see why they are now defunct!

Twitter's good so long as you follow people you share interests with and/or people you are interested in. The more you follow, the more you get followed back (though by this I don't mean thousands of people - then you're almost certainly a spammer).

I generally have work friends, writing friends and tv friends on there and post about all three subjects and much more, getting replies from a wide range of them. If I'd only gone on and followed a bunch of celebs it'd probably be a damn sight lonelier (though potentially still interesting). It's great for commenting on events in real-time, whether news or TV programmes and seeing everyone else's viewpoints too. And you can be more random (imo) than on Facebook.

You pick up news stories most quickly on Twitter as well - try following some of the news sites.

Some celebs are more interesting than others, but don't expect any/many of them to respond to you if you @ them - they get thousands of these, so it's unlikely they'll spot yours.

yes dont follow slebs is a waste of time

photos of yourself ina bridesmaid dress works

but DEFFO most from following hashtags

I can't stand the 'love-ins' between some celebs - where they have Twitter conversations between themselves, but that all the public see.

Caitlin Moran, India Knight and Dara O'Brian are terrible for this. (Although still interesting to be worth following!)

Belle I'm DollyTwat but this is my Christmas name!

I've gone right off loads of celebs I thought were funny but they are dull. Stephen Fry for one. Except when he flounces

For new tweeps, if you click on a tweet you'll see a button with 'in reply to' and then you can sed the whole conversation. You cant see it normally in your timeline unless you follow all the people I think

ooh hello i didnt realise!

Maybe HollyTwat was a cleverer disguise than I thought! Didn't realize was you either!

I stopped following Caitlin Moran. she kept drooling over 'One Direction' (Xfactor boy band - and I mean "boy" band - they're about 16/17. She was making me sick actually - the woman must be in her forties fgs. Plus she never said anything remotely interesting.

If you have an android, Tweetdeck have a brilliant app..

what on earth is an android ?

Android - alternative software to control a mobile phone.

Nokia uses something called Symbian, Apple has iOS, some phones ran Windows Mobile and now Windows 7. Android is software from the team at Google (which also makes the Chrome browser, to compete with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and the Safari [mostly used on Mac PCs])

(sneeks in with a coffee and sits in the corner)

I HAVE to go in an hour. Please tell me.

BIWI - try www.newsnow.co.uk - it scans tens of thousands of web sites and picks out news headlines. While Twitter might be the starting point for some stories, I tend to prefer a well-researched piece from a journalist... (though NewsNow does also scan some blogs, but you can choose to hide any particular web site {news source} if you prefer).

Free, and no need to login - probably uses a cookie to allow for user preferences to ignore some web sites.

Im being followd by ANDREW STONE people!!

Andrew stone?? (scratches head and goes off to google)

Ahh, some bloke off Sky1.

Well, I'm being followed by Penguin publishers! (they are also following thousands of other writers but it felt great for those few minutes before I realised)

Well I'm being followed by Barack Obama!

(like he really has time to listen to the twaddle I tweet)