You’ve mastered Twitter have you, consider yourself an official tweeter and other tweeple follow you? Ok, great but are you really using Twitter effectively? Lets be honest — whatever your reason for using twitter everyone wants more followers and everyone wants to keep them.

Twitter is about sharing small pieces of information with large amounts of people. That’s a powerful opportunity especially for those who provide more detailed information somewhere else on the web, and wants to build an audience, right, but how? Made ya think, didn’t we?!

First and foremost, remember that the more you participate the more you will get out of it, and the faster your community will grow. Make Twitter part of your morning ritual: let your dog out, brew your coffee, and check your email and tweet. Tweet breakfast lunch and dinner for that matter. Tweet what you ask? Content, content, content – even within 140 characters content is key! Get creative, learn how to abbreviate so that your tweets make sense and engage your followers. Most importantly be interactive; respond to tweets, ask questions, answer questions. Not every tweet should answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” Twitter is a conversation, not a monologue; keep in mind you don’t want to clog the Twittersphere with a long series of tweets.

Another important factor to building your cyber community is to be personal, yes personal. Facebook, FourSquare, Twitter, and YouTube etc. are simply a more sophisticated and fun means to connect with each other. We all want to feel heard, accepted, cared for, even important and thus when tweeting write a more thoughtful introduction to the link you’re sharing, ask a question, or make a comment or introduce the link in a way that pertains to the subject of the post. A community is, “A social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.” The beauty of cyber communities is that it’s global and your common culture is the Internet, which enables you to reach tweeple across 7 continents. Your one job within your community is to engage your followers. The more tweeple you engage the bigger your community grows.

Above all find a balance. Don’t just update your daily happenings or post links to your site but respond to others, give back. Balance is key. Come back for more on the balancing act!