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When newbies use Twitter for the first time, they tend to make conversation or post their thoughts without any sort of strategic plan. I certainly did this in my earliest twitters. As I began to spend more time here, I realized that I could segment my followers / people into several strategic groups and if I could make sure that some of my tweets were relevant to each of these groups, I could increase the volume and quality of meaningful interactions with others.

Here are the 4 subgroups of people that I follow and the strategies I use with each:

Search Engine Marketers / Online Marketers: For somebody who does this for a living, I tweet less on this topic than most anyone else in the industry. However, this is the group of people with whom I have the most personal and professional relationships. Therefore, a large percentage of these interactions are @ replies to what other people have shared. I don’t tend to share a lot of search engine marketing information on Twitter (apart from letting folks know I’ve posted a new story) because I see Twitter as a break from my work routine instead of a continuation of it.

Portlanders: Because I work at home, I’m not particularly well-networked in my hometown (apart from folks I’ve met through SEMpdx). I’ve deliberately decided to add many Portlanders to my Twitter feed to hopefully overcome this isolation. I make sure to sometimes “Tweet Locally” as a way of getting noticed by people in my local community.

Employment Professionals: Though I don’t do recruiting, I work for a company that does. I find it very helpful to get insights into what these folks are going through in their work lives, since none of our recruiters are as tech savvy as these folks. When I twit about the dumb things I see on people’s resumes, it is an attempt to strike a chord with these folks (and to get a chuckle from everyone else that follows me).

Others: We all pick up followers along the way that we can’t categorize. If they aren’t interested in my targeted tweets towards the first three groups, hopefully they’ll stick around if they like hearing about the stuff I find interesting (Movies, Music, Sports, and my attempts to make use of my quirky sense of humor).

If you’ve been using Twitter for a while, I encourage you to step back for a minute and take a critical look at how you are utilizing the medium. Do your followers fall into distinct groups of people? If yes, are you addressing your conversations appropriately to each group? If not, I suggest that some targeted “strategic” tweeting might be beneficial to relationship building within your Twitter profile. Sure, much of your conversation will be “off the cuff”, but remember that it will benefit your network visibility to give your followers the type of conversation that lead them to follow you in the first place.