Using Twitter to create a network around you

Twitter has been much maligned and is said to be full of garbage. ‘I am eating a sandwich now’, ‘I love Mariah Carey’, ‘iPods are cool’ etc are just too common on the micro-blogging site. But one way you can utilise it to your advantage is to expand your network on a topic.

If you have a blog and want to get more traffic, go onto twitter, start following like-minded individuals and upload your blog feed to twitter. These people may in turn follow you and read your feed. If they are interested, they might move on to your blog. Simple as that.

While it is true that most people who follow other people rarely read the ‘ followee’s ’ tweets, if you are evolving within a tightly-focussed topic, other people will be sufficiently interested in what you are tweeting about. If your topic is self-catered villas in the Isle of Wight or bi-refrigerent optics, other twitterers might well be interested to know what you have to say on this subject. But please don’t post about the dinner you just fed to your dog. It pays to stay on-topic.

Every time you come across a blog you like in your area and that blogger has a twitter account, you can follow that person and expand your network.