In social media, "we" is always more powerful than "me".
Why talk to yourself when you can talk to thousands?
Start by taking advantage of your existing social networks - invite everyone in, say, your Gmail and Yahoo accounts to your new Twitter account.
Next, hunt and follow the top Singaporean Twitter-ers on Twitterholic.com in the hopes that they will follow you back, if you are interesting.
This should net you a sizable base to start with.
When I built my experimental service called, @singapore_news, I instantly gained 500 followers in a day.
Now go for the jugular with Twollow.com and Tweetspinner.com. I used the keyword-following feature there to specify keywords like "Singapore" and "news" that were relevant to my target audience and Twitter-ers with a high potential (read: those with the same interest) to track @singapore_news in return.
2 Upgrade your Twitter content
It is a simple premise - you get what you give.
The etiquette on Twitter is not to spam with inane posts like "I am eating lunch now".
Aim to be a subject matter expert - on anything from cheap shopping to recycling tips.
By being the arbiter and soothsayer, people will notice quality and they will naturally follow you (or stay with you).
Once you have decided on your pet topic, it is time to start posting.
To maximise exposure in Twittersphere, you should space out your Tweets throughout the day instead of broadcasting all of them at once (that is considered a form of spamming).
Use tools like hootsuite.com and tweetlater.com to put out posts at intervals you pre-set, creating an illusion of fresh updates throughout the day. For content, especially if you are running out of things to say, try feedmytwitter.com, which beefs up your content by pushing your blog's or your favourite websites' RSS feeds to your Twitter account.
3 Have real conversations
This is something a lot of people missed: Chirping is not about you.
It is actually about everybody else and the conversations you hold with them.
Do not talk down - rather, talk to your followers.
The participatory nature of Twitter means that your profile - as an individual or brand - is judged by how it communicates.
With the 140-character limit, write with brevity and charm.
So, rather than say, "I am eating lunch now", add epicurean descriptors: "Just had seafood linguine with laksa pesto for lunch. Slurp!"
4 Measure your chirping gravitas
In the end, a measure of how influential you are is the number of retweets you get.
When someone sees an interesting tweet, they will rebroadcast it.
A retweet is validation that the point you made was useful or it was something that people liked.
You can also use twitter.grader.com and twinfluence.com to see the authority of your Twitter profile.
Or just see your billboard position on twitterholic.com by filtering down to the location "Singapore".
Outside of hunting the little Twitter bluebird, Edvarcl Heng designs social marketing blitzes and can be followed on @edvarcl and his experimental service-Twitter account @singapore_news.
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.
