Friday Connections
Posted by TeamCharlie on March 6, 2009 under Friday Connections, Gabe's Twitter Gems, Social Media, Twitter | 
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This is the first of my planned weekly blogs where I recount the connections I have made during the week. Twitter is all about connecting with people, so I make every effort to do so. I hope to start a trend on Twitter where everyone makes a better effort to actually connect with (as opposed to sell to) people. I have reserved the hash tag #fridayconnect for just this purpose. I would love to see it put to use.
How it works is that you keep track of the NEW people you feel you have connected to or they you during the week. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, just enough so that you know a bit more about that person when you see their tweets. This will breed some sort of familiarity between these new connections. As a side effect this is how you will develop followers in a natural way. So here goes. In no special order, this is my top 10 connections for this past week.
#1 @GreetingsthtGro
Anne brought her daughters to our Twitterthon last Friday and donated to MaryMargaret’s cause. I’m not saying that one has to give us money to make a connection but it sure helps! :)
#2 @Fox5NewsEdge
Other stations should pay attention to what Fox 5 is doing. Not sure who is behind the curtain on this one – sometimes I think it’s the producer and other times it is Brian the news guy but either way, they reach out with their personalities and they pay attention to what people say to them. They engage on Twitter which makes me more interested in their news show. They broadcasted two of my tweets last week! Now I’m not saying that you have to put my tweets on the air to make a connection, but it sure helps! :)
#3 @BrianBolter
This is definitely manned by the Fox 5 News guy. News anchors never get to show their personalities on the air so we think they just don’t have one. Well Brian sure does and he proudly displays it. He also responds if you @ him which is a classy move. Also makes me want to watch their program. To coin a phrase from the Guiness commercial: Brilliant!
#4 @BetsyCollings
This one is a bit different. I have known Betsy for a while in person. To be honest I do not know her that well besides our bantering at our local Chamber of Commerce events. She connected with me by saying nice things about my blog posts. Don’t try this at home unless you are genuine, but that was very nice of her to reach out like she did.
#5 @RobCollings
This one is a related to #4 as you might guess. Rob is a Twitter “newbie” and Betsy recommended that he connect with me. He did it in a very professional yet personal way which I greatly appreciated. He simply @replied to me introducing himself. Again, I don’t recommend you start @replying people at random for no reason, but if someone tweets something you like I think this is a great way to make a deeper connection with them.
#6 @Hiannie
The other day when it snowed I posted a innocuous tweet about how my daughter MaryMargaret enjoyed the snow falling outside. I got a response from someone I had never noticed: “@KidsAreHeroes If it was snowing outside I’d jump for joy!” It turns out this responder was from Singapore and was in the middle of a sweltering heat wave. Now I read her posts whenever I see them thinking about what the weather might be like in Singapore. That’s how you connect on Twitter – respond to people!
#7 @AlexKaris
Alex is an “uber-twit” that has close to 19,000 followers! I retweeted one of his posts and soon after that he followed me. He always responds to my @replies which is amazing considering how many followers he has. I have adopted his habit of following people that retweet my posts. The logic is if they feel the post is worthy of retweeting then we have at least that much in common.
#8 @BirthSource
I received a very nice direct message after I posted one of my blogs. Tracey made a very nice comment and thanked me for posting it. Since my reason for writing about Twitter is to be helpful I was glad to know it helped at least one person. Very nice way to make a personal connection.
#9 @tumblondad, @marianmerritt
I cheated a bit here and added two for the price of one. Both these folks made very nice comments on one of my blogs. Whether it be mine or anyone else’s blog posts, if they help you or if you appreciate them please make an effort to comment on them.
#10 @DFS_Ellen
Ellen runs an online pet supplies store. She actually @replied to my @TeamCharlie moniker, which I periodically use to announce things related to Wags for Hope. Ellen took the time to look up my bio and make a nice comment about Wags for Hope. That’s how to connect with people.
So here you see several examples of how to get people’s attention on Twitter. This to me is putting Twitter to its best use. Look for all of these folks on my #followfriday list, and I hope you all start trying out the #fridayconnect practice.
