Twitter 101: Knowing when to Follow

Twitter is a confusing place at times, no matter what your reason for joining was at the start of your life in the Twittersphere. Those first few close friends that you followed and added to the Twitterfeed are fun, but you still don't know why so many love Twitter.

This is probably because you haven't reached out and found the right people or websites to follow and add to the Twitterfeed. Following on Twitter is not just for friends and close relatives. The real usefulness of Twitter is found in those outside the user's inner circle that they choose to follow.

Following, the Twitterfeed, and RSS
To understand why choosing feeds to follow is so important in Twitter, it is important to understand Twitter's relationship to something called RSS. An RSS feed, short for Really Simple Syndication, is a means of obtaining updates from websites, blogs, or persons as those updates become available. Those RSS feeds are sent to email or are opened in an RSS feed reader for easy access to the updates to which the user is subscribed.

Twitter has many things in common with an RSS feed reader. Twitter users choose websites or people to "follow" or subscribe to, and those updates appear in their Twitterfeed as they become available. These updates can appear in the form of funny quips from the personalities they follow, pictures, or even links to websites that have been recently updated.

The ease of use that Twitter offers for following celebrities, corporations, and other public entities is what makes the microblogging giant most useful. Twitter eliminates the need to continuously check an RSS feed for updates. Instead, those RSS feeds can be consolidated into one RST...a Really Simple Twitterfeed.

Choosing whom to follow
As you look to build your Twitterfeed, ask yourself these questions:

What are your passions, and who tweets about those passions?

What do you want to learn more about, and is there an account to follow that will teach you more?

Who would be the most knowledgeable or most appropriate sources for content in the topics you are most interested in, and do they have an account to follow?

Who are you just interested in knowing more about, and do they have an account to follow?

Once these questions have been asked, start looking up the answers. Popular choices to follow include news outlets, comedians, television stars, bloggers, tech websites, etc.

Knowing when to follow, and when to stay away
The convenience of having all of this updated information from various personalities and sites in one place can come with a cost. There are many feeds offering good, useful, or interesting information.

Unfortunately, however, many feeds exist for the sole purpose of spamming their followers into submission. Some of these Twitter accounts tweet and re-tweet the same content repeatedly until those who follow finally click on their links, and still they continue to tweet the information out long after.

Other feeds, including some famous celebrities, have been hired to advertise a product using their celebrity on Twitter. Once a company has bought out these feeds, their tweets tend to degenerate to a consistent product push, leaving no room for the genuinely interesting or useful tweets.

Choose who you follow on Twitter wisely, but also always remember that you can unfollow those you follow at any time. Most importantly, have fun and join in the conversation with those you follow. Twitter is a tool for you to use, and shouldn't be a frustration.

To follow me on Twitter, add @onlyseano.