The one thing you can do NOW to gain quality Twitter followers

If you’re on Twitter, you’ve most certainly read a social media post or two about the importance of
engaging and interacting your followers, right?  If so, I’m sure you’ve come across a few of the usual suspects: Ask your followers questions (but what if my network isn’t big enough yet and I never get any answers?), use hashtags (the popular ones have thousands of people using them in a 30 second window, no one’s going to see me!), @ mention people (I do, but it takes a lot of time to @ mention people with info they’d care about!). All of these are good tactics, and important things you should be doing, but they take time and you don’t always see a jump in followers. So here’s one thing you can do right now:

Find a Tweet Chat to join.

OK, so it’s not instant (if anyone promises you that, it’s spam), but recurring Tweet Chats that someone else has established – i.e.  done all the hard work and promotions for – are beautiful things.

I’m not saying go out to every Tweet Chat in the world and start blasting messages. On the contrary, you need to spend a little time looking at what’s out there to see what makes sense for you. Chances are when you find topics you care about, you’ve also found the kind of people you want to be connected with on Twitter.

Your first stop can be this handy Google doc, where people have added info about their chats and ones they’ve heard about. Be mindful of the Wikipedia effect, though, as anyone can edit this list or choose to not update it (FYI: apparently Friday #CSRPR chats don’t happen anymore), but there are some very legitimate, useful chats on here. For example, are you a non-profit? Try #NPtalk at 2 p.m. every Wednesday. Small business owner? Check out #smallbizchat every Wednesday at 8 p.m. Here’s one super active one I just joined this month about marketing and fundraising resources for non-profits: #smNPchat, every other Friday at 12 p.m.

Once you’ve filtered down to a few Tweet Chats that look good, you can either mark your calendar to check them out in real time, or you can search for last week’s chat using a tool like The Archivist to see how the conversation went.

But before you join, make sure you read these tips on Tweet Chat etiquette… just don’t want all that research to go to waste because everyone ends up hating you.

1. Find out who the organizer is and keep an eye on him or her leading up to the chat- often times there are specific topics moderators like to focus on each week.

2. During the chat, use www.TweetChat.com and enter the chat hashtag – this will help you keep track of the conversation so you’re not jumping around or missing changes in the direction it’s going.

3. www.TweetChat.com adds the hashtag automatically to the end of your tweet, so don’t look like a rookie and add it there yourself or else you’ll end up with: “@juliefeldman: I agree! #NPchat #NPchat”.

4. Join at the beginning of the chat and wait for the moderator’s queue. A lot of times it’s along the lines of “hi all, why don’t u check in & tell us what you do.” So here’s something I might say: “@juliefeldman: Hi, I’m checking into the #NPchat, I’m Julie Feldman with DC area based PR agency @CFoxComm #NPchat”.

5. If you join late, see where the convo is and only introduce yourself if you have something relevant to add. “@juliefeldman: Hi, joined late! I agree & think that nonprofits need to set a goal for their various audiences 1^st & foremost #NPchat”.

6. If you’re joining for an ulterior motive, it better be relevant because we will see right through your “so speaking of business owners, my company is looking for free computers if anyone here has some! #NPchat”

7. Most importantly, be relevant and offer quality thoughts and questions.

8. During or directly after the chat, follow people who joined. If they didn’t beat you to it, this is a great way to give them a little extra nudge to follow you back. Hey, that’s the whole point of this post!

Any other Tweet Chat tips on etiquette? Or other ways you can find out about Tweet Chats to join?  Tweet us @cfoxcomm, or send us a message on our Facebook page.

Julie Feldman is PR Associate at C.Fox Communications. Find her on Twitter @juliefeldman.