Retweet your competition, if you’re sharing the best news from everywhere, people will follow you for everything they need to know. But, as important as aggregation is, be sure to post original content as well.
TWITTER SEARCH
To find photos and video on Twitter, use “filter: photos” “filter: videos” when searching. Another good place to build source lists is with directories that media companies offer: New York Times and Reuters for example. Consider using a service like Storyful to help verify socially sourced reports. Credit your sources with a hat tip, a retweet, anything. People are appreciative to see their content (or their find) shared. Do Twitter searches (search.twitter.com) and look up the subjects you write about. Respond to people who tweet about things you’re writing about, get their attention. Don’t link them to your articles right away, build a relationship over time and they’ll follow you and get the links by following your feed. Search Research.ly’s PeopleBrowsr for old tweets that you might need. Enter in a keyword or a username, and you can search a number of days back (like 60 days back for 2 months ago) to narrow your search. They go back about 2 years for free right now. Use sites like Klout.com and FindInfluence.com to find sources that are authoritative/influential in your area to help build your list of sources. Sign up for a free @muckrack account and get daily digests of top journalists’ tweets about your subject of interest. Crucial for journos & PR pros. Use MuckRack.com as a way to find journalists by the company or by beat and add them to Twitter lists to monitor news that breaks in those topics.
Bio: Use Bing’s Keyword Research Tool to find out keywords associated with your business and it’s products or services. Then add the ones relevant to your business to your bio.
WHO TO FOLLOW
Create an account and follow companies, individual hiring managers, or other users that you find interesting. While certain companies may tweet job leads, others might use this as a tool to promote their business, inform customers of sales and specials, or simply for leisure use. Follow all customers or people that might be most receptive to your brand. Visit other Twitter search websites to identify users grouped by industry.
- Who are the most successful people in your industry?
- People you admire
- Business colleagues
- Customers
- Vendors you buy from
- Journalists or authors who cover your industry
- Business magazines/Newspapers
- Local businesses
- Local chamber of commerce/political representatives