bo burnham

Step 1: Use Tweetworks If you're tired of waiting for Twitter to add group support, use a site called Tweetworks. It allows you to create or join groups. It only took about 10 seconds for me to set one up. Just put in the name and description of the group and you're all set. It's the simplest way to create a group and get it off the ground.
bo burnham

Tweetworks is a great way to start your group.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)Step 2: Promote your group on Twitter It seems counter-intuitive to create a group on another service and promote it on Twitter, but that's precisely what you need to do, since you're trying to get all your like-minded friends together. Tweetworks offers an automatic tweet that allows you to input a few characters followed by a link inviting friends to join the group. But unfortunately, it's not very informative. Do it yourself.


Step 3: Get informative And that brings us to the next point. Because Tweetworks doesn't make its tweets informative, you'll need to do the legwork yourself. Put your group and its topic area into your own tweets on Twitter and place it in your e-mail. I've found that simply putting "Join my tech-focused Tweetworks group" followed by a link in an e-mail is a good way to get people to join. And since you're appealing to the Twittersphere, make sure all your tweets make it clear what your vision for your group is. For example, if you're forming a New York Yankees group, updating your stream with a message like, "Join my NY Yankees Twitter group on Tweetworks" followed by a link to the page should do the trick.

Step 4: Make sure the group is active What good is a group if it's not active? If people come back to your group every day to find out what's being said and see what kind of links are being shared, they're more likely to tell their own followers about it.
bo burnham
Step 5: Join other groups If you really want to grow your own Twitter group, you'll need to join others. See, most of the people who actually want to join groups are doing it already. So the best way to promote your own group and add members is to engage those people on Tweetworks. I joined four or five groups over the weekend. After talking with other members and coming to the realization that we had similar interests, I asked them to join my own group that I created earlier in the day. By Sunday night, my small Tweetworks private group of 3 had ballooned to 25 members.