Granted, I don’t know what you think, but anyway. 😀

Ever since I started using my most beloved service on the entire Internet – twitter – I’ve oscillated between three perspectives of viewing “favorites”:

1. To gain a lot of new followers.
2. To collect a list of favorite tweets. – (lamest, btw)
3. To agree with and validate my friend’s ideas.

As a marketer, of course I employed the first tactic over and over – for several accounts, not just @V4Violetta – but… while it gives you new followers: a) it’s not necessarily the followers you’d like, and b) they’re not engaged followers.

So there have been (still are) services that automate giving favorites to a bunch of tweets on said topics or to specific channels or people, etc. But I’ve tried and had no satisfaction from those.

The second one is probably the dumbest thing you could do. I can’t believe I ever considered it! Why do I need such a list… who’s going to look at it? If you want a list of tweets, create a collection, for God’s sake!

So I’ve evolved to the third method – finally.

It took me a while to realize… I’ll never engage anyone if I’m not the one who’s engaged first. (It’s like the whole give-then-take maxim.) Think about it: every day you see this person digging your tweets and you like them. How could you not! They appreciate YOU. So you engage with them, check out what they tweet, and so on. Before you know it, you’re buds… sort of.

Anyway, here’s what I want you to do:

1. Look around twitter for cool accounts.
2. Make a list of people you want to be friends with.
3. Only engage with those people. Every day.

This is what I do. I have a list of 71 favorite people – it started with 20 and it grows every day – and I engage with those daily. They’re friends, people whom I admire, and generally people who tweet interesting things.

Only then will you have an engaged following/community.

And remember, if someone does something nice for you, they go on the list. No exceptions. Also, when someone starts a conversation with you, you might also consider putting them on the list. I mean, not everyone on twitter has the ability. Some people just use it to dump opinions.

So that’s why I give favs – to appreciate people I like.

Because they’re awesome, because they deserve it, and because my day’s better for it.

And I give A LOT of them because I’m generous with my attention when it comes to people. I might not read your entire article (I appreciate it if you got this far on mine), but I will read and think about your tweet. If it’s awesome, like you are, I’ll share it and talk to you about it.

That’s what cyber-friends are for.

What about you? What’s your twitter style?

P.S. I realize this should be a different story for brands. You should engage influencers, yada yada. Don’t bother. They’re way too busy on twitter. I suggest – instead – to engage real people. I did that over on @MeetBeTweet and it worked, for the most part. Besides, I’ve always said that brands should be more human. 😉