Once you start your Twitter account you will find that Twitter offers suggestions on people to follow. If you login to Twitter, you will see on the right side of the screen the people who are following you, “Followers” and below that “Who to follow.” When you are first starting out, there may not be many suggestions, however as you follow more and more people Twitter will interpret your interests and make more (and presumably better) suggestions for you.
The top listing in the suggestions is frequently, but not always, a promotion, which you may, or may not, want to follow. You will know it is a promoted Tweep by the “Promoted” box next to their handle. I find the promoted Tweeps don’t seem to have any real connection to me or my interests, but other than that the suggestions are generally pretty good.
You can either click on the “Follow” next to their Twitter handle or click on their handle and review their profile to see if they are indeed someone you want to add to your list of followers. Clicking on the X to the right of their handle will delete them from this list.
If you click “Refresh suggestions” you will be served up additional people you can follow.
Browse Interests to Find People to Follow
Below this you will find “Browse interests” and “Find friends”
Clicking on the Browse interests link opens a full page “who to follow” and allows you to look through Twitter by categories such as Business, Funny (not to be confused with funny business), Government, Sports, Travel, Technology, Health…By clicking on a category you will find people who have similar interests that you can choose to follow.
For example, I clicked on the category Food & Drink and a list of 81 people to follow came up.
Or if you have a specific topic that you are interested in you can enter that into the search box directly. For example, I can enter “chocolate” and anyone who expresses in their profile will be listed. Similarly, if you want to find people in your town or region you can enter that in the search box. (Hint: this is a great way to connect with people in your local area!)
The more people you follow, the better the suggestions made by Twitter will become, especially if you are searching for a particular niche or region.
Keep in mind that if you want people to be able to find you, then you should be sure to complete your Twitter bio with the keywords or terms that you want to connect over. If you are an artisan chocolatier in Loveland, Colorado with a retail store downtown then you would want to include all that in your bio so people in town who love chocolate will be able to find you easily.
When you are searching on interests and when you are writing your bio, think about the various ways that people might search for your topic. For example, not everyone will think to search on “chocolatier” but “chocolate” is an easy search term.