Whether you’ve been on Twitter for years or are brand new to the platform, many people wonder exactly how to go about interacting with people. One of the best parts about being on Twitter is that all users have the chance to interact and befriend people they would not normally be able to meet in real life.

So how do you go about making a new friend on Twitter, you ask? Here are five tips to help you make connections that will greatly enhance your experience.

Use @ replies

An obvious first step to meeting people and interacting with them is through the use of @ replies. As noted before on this blog, @ replies are very simple to use and the primary way of interacting with others on Twitter.

Direct message

Direct messaging is another way of building up a friendship with a Twitter friend. If the other person is following you back, you will be provided with an option to direct message. While many marketers and people in general may use direct messages to spam, use your direct messages to send personal messages to others.

Whether it’s checking in, a reaction to a tweet or just saying hi, most people appreciate it when others take time to contact them directly, off the Twitter public stream.

Retweet often

Another way to build up connections and make new friends on Twitter is to retweet them. Retweeting is one of the easiest way to support others and expresses your approval of their content.

While some retweets may be hostile or out of pure disagreement, retweeting someone and attaching a personal message or response at the end of the tweet shows the person that you care about the content they share.

Endorse them

A fourth way you can build Twitter friendships is through endorsing them. This can be done in a variety of ways. You can submit a recommendation via a Twitter recommendation system (such as Mr. Tweet) or by attaching a follow-friendly tag (#followfriday, etc.).

While there has been some debate over whether tags such as follow friday are still valued, it is still a nice gesture and is likely to be noted by the recipient.

Offer help/assistance when necessary

Assuming that you like a fellow tweeter enough to keep tabs on them, make sure that you respond to calls to action or questions when appropriate. For instance, if your Twitter friend is looking for a restaurant recommendation and is away from a computer, you could help him/her out by researching and tweeting a few reviews.

Generally, the more you support your Twitter friends, the more they will support you back. As long as you make an effort to build relationships on Twitter, you will have little problem doing so and will greatly improve your Twitter experience in the process.

(Photo Credit: Flickr)

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If you were online around noon or so today, you probably saw your Twitter followers and following count at 0.

Zero. Mass hysteria.

Even a Mashable post couldn’t stop people freaking out all across the multiple timelines I follow in TweetDeck. “Where did my followers go?” “I hope they aren’t gone forever!” I want them back.”

Whoa.

Despite the countless number of posts telling us that the followers count doesn’t matter, if any single timeframe could prove that wrong, it happened today. People really cared that their followers were gone.

So indeed, the followers count still does matter. But to who?

I would argue that the followers count means the most to the individual person. People take ownership (and some even take pride) in a singular number that represents, in a count, how much influence you hold in Twitter. (Studies have actually shown that the follower count doesn’t matter with regard to retweets and shared items, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment). It also probably represents the ungodly amount of time all of us spent on Twitter that we, ourselves, take away from our days to contribute to the platform.

But who cares, really? Who goes around bragging that they have 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 followers? People that aren’t on Twitter (and trust me, there are a hell of a lot of people that aren’t) probably perceive you as insane.

What if the followers count wasn’t visible?

Let’s think about the followers count a bit differently, now. What if it wasn’t visible to the public, but you could only see it on your own account? Would you brag about what threshold you have? People would probably be much less inclined to even bring up a followers count, focusing instead on the individual Twitter users that make their Twitter experience so enjoyable. Your closest followers—if you will.

If nobody could see a followers account on any account, the Twitter users with the most followers would lose some of their influence. Many see Ashton Kutcher’s ridiculous followers count, and some listen to what he has to say because of it.

However, the people that still listen to “Twitter influencers” would be genuinely interested in what the person has to say. For example, many of us listen to Chris Brogan—Chris Brogan has a large followers count, so for some, it may be imperative to listen to what he has to say. But without his followers count, the people that listen to him “because he has a large following” would drop out, allowing him to interact with and share content with the ones that truly want to listen to what he has to say.

The Proposal On The Followers Count

Twitter should simply hide or remove the followers count. While I understand that doing so may have tremendous impacts on organizations (and even some self-obsessed individuals), it would be a great step for going back to basics with social networking and focusing around true relationships, independent of a numerical value.

Mass-following and mass-removing would not be totally solved, but most people would stop doing it—the motivation for adding followers at a ridiculous rate would be gone. The Twitter community would become even more individualized—allowing the user to focus on the content shared by their closest network rather than thousands of people (which many people can’t keep up with anyway).

What are your thoughts on the Twitter bug today and the followers count? Have today’s events changed the way you think about your follower count?

(Photo Credit: Flickr)

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