From: Dharmesh Shah 

Date: April 13, 2010 6:36:26 PM EDT

To: Scott Kirsner 

Subject: Re: A quick question RE this Sunday's column

Scott,

You came to the right place.  :)

I have lots of thoughts on this.  Here are some of my tactical tips on building a (relevant) twitter following:

1. Make sure you complete your profile (bio, website link, location).  Of the 7 million twitter accounts we've looked at, 76% of users fail to include their bio/description.

2. Optimize for the "retweet" (i.e. tweeting things that will likely be forwarded).  Tips for that:  i) Don't use up all 140 characters or it forces user to "edit" your tweet when they retweet it.  ii) Don't "self reference" (say "I", "me", etc.) -- those tweets tend to get retweeted less.  iii) Include a link in your tweets.  Tweets that include links tend to get retweeted more. 

3. Make it easy for people to find you and follow you.  If you have a website, put a "Follow Me On Twitter" button.  Include it in your newsletter.  Add it to your blog. 

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you need more (we've got a bunch of data/stats on retweeting and such).

-Dharmesh