Hey, how ya doin’? Why I’m calling everyone I follow on Twitter

09 Jun 2010

I joined Twitter over a year ago for completely the wrong reasons: I opened a Twitter account because everyone else had one and it seemed like a laugh.

Although I didn’t give too much thought as to why I was using Twitter and what I wanted to get out of it, I did think about what I was going to tweet.

I decided that all public tweets had to be related to what I’m involved in: Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, Design, Copywriting, SEO, Word Stuff, Grammar and Punctuation. Any post or article I found online that was interesting, useful or amusing I would share. Any tweet that was interesting, useful or amusing I would retweet. And I would always be friendly, sometimes funny, and occasionally insightful.

Oh yeah. And I wouldn’t tweet about what I ate for breakfast (who cares), what I was working on (who cares), or whether or not I was tired (who cares).

I started off by following just a few people. Mainly the big names whose blogs I read anyway. But pretty quickly I got a few followers. And I followed some of them back. And it sort of grew and grew. In the last year my Twitter friends have kept me up-to-date, informed, entertained and amused. Twitter has got me new clients, an interview for a book and various guest posts. It has enabled me to email some of the top industry bods with a question because, hey, we already have a relationship via Twitter. (And every single one of them has come back to me.)

And I’ve really enjoyed the amazing support, advice and luuuurve of my fellow copywriters. (Which if you’re a freelancer working on your ownsome is invaluable.)

But as time went on and ‘the people I know on Twitter’ became ‘friends I have on Twitter’ I felt the need to know more about the people behind the avatar.

So a few weeks ago I announced my quest: to call everyone I follow on Twitter and have a chat.

I’m starting off with all the UK copywriters and writers because I figure they’re going to be pretty cool. Then the overseas copywriters (via Skype, I guess.) Then the SEOers. Then the designers.

Luckily I don’t follow Paris Hilton or Ashton Kutcher. But I do follow No. 10, Arsenal Football Club and The Guardian, who I’m thinking may be fairly tricky to get hold of. And some of those A-list bloggers are going to be hard to pin down, if for no other reason than they’re always flitting all over the world attending conferences.

But so far so good. All the copywriters I’ve spoken to in the last few weeks have been fabulous, and happy to share a top tip or some words of wisdom. I’ll gather these together for a future blog post.

How long will it take? No idea. I only follow about 250 people, so under a year if I call one person a day (which I probably won’t). But I think it will be kind of fun.

So if your ‘phone rings in the next 5 minutes  – it could well be me.