Cristael Bengston on our Twitter page

So MacValley's Twitter page is up. And frankly, the darned thing scares me to death. But I might as well gird myself and tackle the Twitter learning curve, beginning right now.

I'm going to document my struggles and progress (!) on our MacValley Blog. It should be interesting.

And here's the opening struggle: I sent a cry-for-help email to Justin Bradshaw, our presenter for last February because I knew he had Twitter (@justinsail) (www.maccog.com). And I had my answer by the next day, which was super-nice of him.

Hi Justin --

When you presented at MacValley last February (and a fine presentation it was) you talked about your Twitter page.Now both MacValley and I have Twitter pages (@macvalley and @cristaelb) and I am going through my usual learning curve.

I was wondering if I could ask you a very simple question. I am following 10 people, and I have 4 followers. And I can't remember how I got my followers to follow me.

I've read four books on Twitter, and I've tried Twitter 'Help', and I can't find a word on this, anywhere.

Can you help me?

Good question. You can't really "get" followers in any specific way... people either want to follow you or they don't. The best way to get someone to follow you (I think) is to follow them. The next best way is to @mention them in a post. That way they'll usually see your tweet and if they like it they'll probably click on your profile and if they like what they see they might follow you there. So just decide what you're interested in, tweet about that, and then follow others who seem to be interested in that stuff too :)

I tend to get followers when I post about specific things. Many companies and people have constant twitter searches that when you post something about "iPad cases" for example, they will see it and maybe follow you. But who knows... it's mostly a crapshoot.

cheers,
justin