It’s common to find blog posts that list people you should follow on Twitter. They might highlight designers, developers, artists or just cite a list of social media big names. They give a lot of good advice but one thing seems constant, the people they recommend already have several thousand followers.
Of course those Twitter users probably have several thousand followers for a reason. They provide good tweets and contribute to the wider community. But users with smaller numbers of followers can be equally worthwhile, and they don’t get the publicity. It’s harder to grow your follower numbers at the start, even if your tweets are worthwhile.
I’m hardly a big pull on Twitter, but with approaching 600 followers I’ve at least got past the initial hurdle. What I’d like to do is highlight five people I follow who you almost definitely haven’t heard of, because they don’t have many followers, but who are worth taking a look at.
@justsofestival (44 followers)
Designing for technology is great, but it’s easy to overlook the wider world of design. It’s also easy to overlook the most creative people there are, kids. Highlighting great creative resources for encouraging children, justsofestival has a chatty and engaging style. Tweets that are great if you have kids, but equally interesting and worthwhile resources if you want some alternative inspiration as an adult.
@bombaycrow (45 followers)
Open source PHP/Linux based technology is a powerful model. Which means that .NET, C# and development tools and resources surrounding them are often overlooked in the social media community. With a heavy focus on these areas and the EPiServer content management platform, bombaycrow provides a different view on web development and technical architecture. It makes a nice change from everything being PHP based, without losing relevance to development and design.
@WilsonPortfolio (69 followers)
An eclectic feed from a talented artist (check out his work on his website). Ranging the whole gamut from technical comments on Gmail development to artistic discussion, UFC predictions and movie notes. Enough of a regular update to be worthwhile without the tweet overload that you might otherwise face when covering so many different topics.
@pixana (104 followers)
The profile says “passionate about webdesign” and that definitely comes through in her posts. An intermittent flow of great links featuring quality web design, technical tips and good practice. Seems to tweet in small bunches every few days, but when she does the links are worthwhile and a nice low ratio of retweets compared to new content.
@HeatherEx (114 followers)
Regular posts from someone who’s clearly excited about the possibilities of web design. It’s great to see the application of a non-technical focus background to learning the theory and practice of web design, CSS and HTML. HeatherEx posts great links and comments on the nature of web design freelancing, with a fresh perspective and an accessible style.
Why not take a moment to look at the people you’re following, identify some of them who are less well known, and give them a boost that they deserve?
One Comment
Nice list. Good folks to follow — I did. :D Thanks for the connections.