Twitter, now known as X, is one of the most popular social media channels today.

It offers rapid-fire news, updates, photos, jokes, event information, concise analysis, opinion (does it ever!) and many other useful bits of information. Over the course of one day, you could get thousands of tweets in your news feed.

How then, does someone like an entrepreneur or business professional—accountants, financial planners, lawyers, insurance agents, mortgage brokers—get started without getting overwhelmed?

Here are four easy steps (and some things to avoid) to follow.

Craft your bio for purpose

Once you’ve created your account and followed best practices for adding your profile photo, it’s time to create your bio.

You’re only given so many characters (it is Twitter, after all) for this section, so make it count. It should say exactly what you do. Avoid cryptic bios or being too cute. Just be simple yet descriptive and professional.

To make things easy for yourself, review what you did for your LinkedIn headline and either add to that or simply copy and paste.

Don’t forget to also include a link to your website and your location.

Strategize who you follow

Think about your short and long-term goals. Do you want to be a known as a thought leader in your local area or within your industry? You need to build that following.

Connect with people and businesses in your field by either searching on Twitter or by seeking out their websites. Most companies promote their social media channels on their home page. Look locally first then broaden your search regionally and globally.

Most importantly, avoid spamming random people. Seek out those that can help you raise your profile or those with whom you do business. Here’s a quick list of people to follow in the early going:

• Colleagues
• Competitors
• Classmates
• Clients and customers
• Other area businesses
• Media
• Friends and family

Chances are when you follow them, they will likely follow you back. Once you start tweeting content, it’s probable your new followers will retweet, like or share your tweets to their followers, thus potentially gaining more followers for you.

Another way to increase your following is to seek out influencers relevant to your goals. For example, in my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, searching for the city’s denoted hashtag will bring up many influential people in the area.

So let’s say you’re setting up a business in #HamOnt. Following people such as city councillors, business and shop owners, restaurateurs, booksellers, activists, curators or anyone like-minded, should bring you a steady return of follow-backs. Then you will likely be introduced to a wider array of influencers.

No need to tweet 50 times a day – all it takes is a few

I’ve seen people on Twitter with over 100,000 tweets (!!!) but only a thousand followers. Or less. Some of the most influential people on Twitter, on the other hand, have only a few thousand total tweets.

More often than not, the latter group is pushing content that is relevant and timely to their followers.

Like with most things, quantity is not the name of the game. Think about the value and unique qualities you provide your audience and translate that into good content.

It does not have to always be original content either, though this helps.

Subscribe to RSS feeds on Feedly and review it 2-3 times per day for articles that you think your readers will appreciate. If you do this on a regular basis, people will start to look to you more often for good content. They may even want to start a conversation with you to discuss it more in depth.

Engage, engage, engage

The point of social media today is to engage with your audience.

This includes, at least in the early stages of your social media strategy, thanking new followers (and make those messages as personal as possible), reaching out to those who retweeted something you wrote, and replying to those who mention you positively.

Did you visit a local restaurant recently? Find them on Twitter and thank them publicly for the hospitality. In all likelihood, the owner or manager will reach out to you via reply, retweet, like or direct message to engage in further conversation. Keep those conversations going so your followers can see where your interests lie.

When someone asks you a question or comments on something you tweeted, make it your first priority to reply to them. Don’t overthink the reply too much. Just be human about it.

This is a simple medium. Treat it like an everyday conversation you would ordinarily have with your customers and the followers shall come.