Make Friends On Twitter

On Twitter if you are authentic, have a strategic plan, and understand how to effectively use Twitter, you can influence people and make friends in ways that will benefit both you and them. (Now while you could do this for political causes, in this article I'm only talking about creating relationships to promote your brand, book or business.)

The first step to influencing people and making friends is to be someone whom others on Twitter know, like and trust. And this step has several elements:

- You Twitter profile must be authentic - your real name along with your username, preferably a headshot of yourself rather than a logo or icon design, an informative bio rather than a silly one or none at all, and a link to your website or blog. If you do not have a website or blog, then link to your LinkedIn or Facebook profile.

- You must have more than a couple of tweets, especially more than a couple of tweets from two months ago. You need to demonstrate you are a serious participant on Twitter by tweeting several times over the course of each week.

- You must share information that will be valued by the people whom you hope to influence and by the friends you hope to make. This does not mean sharing what you ate for dinner (unless you are a chef). It does mean sharing worthwhile information in the arena in which you hope to influence people and make friends. This could be sports, media, films, medicine, military, aging. Whatever. But you want to create a consistent image of who you are on Twitter so that, when people check out your recent tweets, they find an interesting person who understands Twitter etiquette and contributes to the Twitter zeitgeist in a positive way.

Now that you have established yourself as a contributing citizen of the Twitter universe, you can start to use the various Twitter and third-party search applications to seek out people who you might want to influence and people with whom you might like to make friends.

Again, this should be carried out strategically. It does not accomplish a great deal, for example, if you spend a great deal of time trying to influence and make friends with people in Orlando, Florida, although your goal is to try to get changes to city government in San Francisco.

That's why the bragging of people about the huge number of people they follow and/or are following them may be meaningless. Are these people that you want to influence and/or become friends with? Or are these simply numbers used to impress people with how important you think you are on Twitter?

Once you've identified people with whom you'd like to connect, you should start engaging in conversation with them on Twitter. Be careful not to act as if you are someone's best friend after an exchange of one or two tweets. While friendships can develop rather fast on Twitter, do not expect them to do so.

Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? Slow and steady won that race. If you are an authentic participant on Twitter, you will be here for the long haul. Thus you have time to grow your influence and friendships.

Always remember that Twitter is a two-way street. It is not a place where you look only for people who can benefit you. You must devote equal time to benefiting others. And if you follow these guidelines, you should be well on the way to influencing people and making friends on Twitter.