5 Ways to find people and companies to follow on twitter

This post originally appeared on the Enterprise Worldwide blog.

If you are just getting started on Twitter, or if you are finally doing something with your Twitter account, gaining great followers starts by following others. Here are 5 ways to find people and companies to follow on Twitter.

1. Follow people and organizations you know first. Logic would dictate you follow the people you know first. Clients, referral sources and vendors are a great place to start. In order to do this, you will need their handle. It’s the easiest way to find them on Twitter. You can often find this information posted on emails or the company website.
2. Explore your followers. As people begin to follow you back, you will want to explore who they are following. This can open you up to a whole new world of followers.
3. Use Hashtags. Twitter uses hashtags to categorize tweets that share a common topic or belong to a particular group and make it more accessible to a broader audience. Following a hashtag is a great way to find people who are interested in the same topics as you.
4. Check out Listorious. Twitter allows each account to curate lists. Lists can be curated around any reason and are basically a grouping a people. Listorious gives you a way to search all the publicly curated lists and is another great way to discover new people to follow.
5. Follow your Competitors. Any great business person will tell you to know what your market is doing. Following them on twitter is one way to gather business intelligence.

Finding people to follow on Twitter is just the beginning. You also need to build followers. In order to do that you need to mind who you follow because it isn’t always a 1:1 ratio. When looking at who to follow keep in mind three things.

First, how do these people/companies align with your target market? They should be a decision maker or company you want to do business with or an influence (press, referral source, vendor) that works in or around your target market.

Second, how active are they. You don’t have to tweet every minute, but you do need to have influence and some level of consistency. Look at the number of tweets and followers. More active followers will have greater influence. Passive or less active accounts can be important, but the former will allow you to build your visibility faster on Twitter.

Finally, look at what they tweet. Are they just self-promoting or are they sharing content and engaging with people?

New to Twitter? Follow me, @sarah_johnson28, or check out my lists for who to follow.