I have to admit that for a very long time I didn’t get the whole “Twitter thing.”  Why should I care about anything said in 140 characters by a total stranger across the globe?  And for that matter, why should they care about what I have to say?

One of my real life friends was an early adopter and when I did suck it up and make my first Twitter account, he filled up my timeline to the point where I unfollowed him (Sorry, SJ!).  I didn’t even want to hear about the insignificant things that my friends were doing.

My personal Twitter account had roughly 14 real life friends from back home, and I could deal with that.  No one tweeted often enough to invoke my wrath.  Maybe it’s my ridiculous OCD.  I was the kind of person who, when instant messaging was cool, would respond to IMs in 0.04 seconds and devote the entirety of my attention to the IM conversations.

When I was a little undergrad physics major, one of the upperclassmen gave me the following advice:  “20 credits may seem like a lot, but it’s way easier to deal with than 12 credits.”  I thought he was insane at the time, but I think now that he might have been onto something.  Whether it’s that you’re willing to work harder so you’re psychologically in a different mindset, or you just understand that you’ll have no free time, I’m not sure.  The point is that the same thing is true for Twitter.  As you acquire a seemingly unwieldy number of followers, something either clicks or it gets easier.  Dive in.

The “trick” to Twitter is simple:  acquire followers who you’re actually interested in learning about.  Never use a Twitter user as a stepping stone to meeting some arbitrary number goal.  Twitter is about community, and it’s way easier to build a rapport with someone who has similar interests to your own.  Listen to your Twitter community; give them the information THEY want and help them out when you can.  If you expect to take things from people without giving, you’re going to be very disappointed in most walks of life.

Here’s a cheat sheet that should help you out:

DO’s

• DO find people with relevant interests via http://search.twitter.com.  Consider using Tweetdeck in order to see tweets matching your search criteria as they’re tweeted.
• DO mix up your tweets.  If you’re adding people while your timeline is filled entirely with @replies or links, people will assume that you don’t have anything original to contribute.  On the other hand, fill your stream up entirely with original thoughts and you won’t be seen as an active community member.
• DO engage your followers with general questions once in a while.  Caveat: you must actually care about their answers.  If you’re just asking a question to gauge how responsive your followers are, you’re not being a good tweeter.
• DO add @legalgeekery to your Twitter list (had to sneak this in somehow, right?)
• DO learn about #hashtags and participate in community events such as #followfriday.  As a matter of ettiquite, make sure to say something about the people who you tweet to #followfriday.
• DO read and @reply to your followers.

DONT’s

• DON’T try to subtly sneak self-promotion into a Tweet.  Just this morning someone followed me and tweeted at me asking me if law students were trained at X, where X was a book they happened to be promoting.  This is the worst kind of promotion because it will be clear to intelligent people that you don’t care about their response to the question.  If you’re promoting something, be very up front about it.
• DON’T fight with people or devote too many @replies to one person.  If you want to go over 2 @replies in 10 minutes or so to the same person, consider moving it to direct messages.
• DON’T say anything too polarizing if you’re looking to reach the maximum number of people possible.  Sure, some people will be follow you even if your ideals are drastically different than theirs (which is how it should be) but some won’t.  Unless you’re tweeting for a cause, consider playing the impartial observer with your tweets.
• DON’T DM or @reply the same thing to everybody who follows you.  It gets old.  Fast.

Do you have your own tips to maximize the “Twitter experience?”

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