How to make friends on and off Twitter


Inside tips from our guest blogger on how to follow and get followed without needing a restraining order.

brett rosnerBrett Rosner is a digital producer for wsbtv.com in Atlanta and has written for HyperVocal.com. His posts on social media are seen by millions and have produced record highs in web traffic to his company websites.

He’s also known for his love of cat photos and ridiculous memes.

You can see for yourself on his Twitter @Brosner85

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been on Twitter since December 2008. And I love it.
Most of my friends and family know I spend a lot of time on Twitter — that’s just my thing. I do try to balance it with my actual social life (or what social life I have left).
But I’ve found that you can use Twitter as a modern day version of pen pals. It can be the 21st Century way of keeping in touch with people from all over the world. And I’ve made many new friends because of it.
I often reference people I regularly tweet back and forth in everyday conversations. I mean, I have some really interesting people that I interact with on Twitter. Some are journalists, newsmakers, on-air personalities, viral “video kings” for example.
Sometimes when I tell a story and include a name of someone, my friends and co-workers ask if they are real friends or “Twitter friends.” More often than not, I’m usually referencing my “Twitter friends.” They are just so damn interesting!
After years on Twitter, I’ve amassed over 1,400 followers and there are about a dozen people I tweet with on a daily basis. As someone who works in digital news and loves viral and funny content, I’ve begun finding other people on Twitter who tweet the same things I do. And guess what, they followed me back and we started a Twitter friendship.
After a while of back-and-forth tweeting, some of those Twitter friends became Facebook friends, then we added each other on G-chat (Google’s version of instant messaging) and then eventually texting.
This past April, I traveled to New York to meet some of my northern “Twitter friends” to become friends IRL (in real life).
I stayed with a real-life friend who happens to be a social media editor for ABC News and who also is very active on Twitter. We share many of the same “Twitter friends” but since he is living in New York, he has had the opportunity to meet them in person.
I met about half a dozen of my “Twitter friends” at various places around NYC and unsurprisingly — they turned out to be just as awesome in person as they were online. And now we’re genuine friends.
(For the record, I’ve also met and become IRL friends with several other “Twitter friends” who live in the same city I do.)
So that’s my story, now here’s what you should do.
1: Search Twitter for topics that you enjoy. That can include sports, news, fashion, food, travel, photography — literally anything that other humans enjoy.
2: Once you find some tweets that fit your interest, follow those users and take a look at who that person follows, and the followers of that person.
3: Be active. It doesn’t take much time or dedication to scroll through some tweets on your phone or computer. Tweet to the new people you follow! Since you already have something in common, it’s easy to start conversations.
And sometimes, it just may not work out. The person you follow may not follow you back or won’t tweet you back. That’s OK. But I bet more often than not, you can make some good connections with your new Twitter pals.
It may seem odd or strange to think of Twitter as an online social gathering but sometimes it’s a great tool for those who are shy or have really niche interests. Out of the hundreds of millions of people on Twitter, you’re bound to find someone who has the same interests as you.