A few months ago I opened a Twitter account due to peer pressure. I don’t like texting except for business, and I thought Twitter was a silly waste of time. But all the marketers I admire were waxing poetic about how great Twitter is, and that MySpace was past and Facebook was clumsy.

I have to admit that the first month passed without incident. I followed some friends and generally ignored my account. I tweeted once a week if I remembered, and I wasn’t sure who if anyone was reading my nonsense, like “Eating fresh apple pie” and “I had a good shock.”

Mysteriously, my friend count went up to about 60, and I didn’t bother to follow anyone because I had no idea who they were. After reviewing a few of them, I decided I was being followed by a bunch of hungry vendors. All the more reason to ignore Twitter.

Then someone I met at a marketing conference after party said something that made sense to everything. He said to ignore all the spam and just pretend that Twitter is a party. Go find people who are following people I like, follow them and see if you can strike up a conversation and get them to follow you.

Easier said than done. Have you ever been to a party full of new entrepreneurs from home? (And I don’t mean a Tupperware party.) It’s almost impossible to have a conversation that doesn’t turn into a business pitch!

So this is what I did. I tweeted jokes, dumb clean jokes. (What gets wet when drying?… A towel!) I started with a joke a day. And every time he had a new follower, he would send her a message thanking her and asking if he had any jokes. At the end of a week, I had 350 followers! In 3 weeks I reached 1000 followers and today, about two months and several pranks later, I reached 6000.

Those little jokes have started some real conversations and have already resulted in some good business connections. It’s slow, but I’m having fun and have been collecting jokes that are sent to me. (This appeared today: Have you seen the movie “Constipated”… no, maybe it hasn’t been released yet… ugh!) I also like to retweet or comment on a lot of cool things. and funny things that others are posting.

One of the interesting spinoffs of these tweet jokes is that it keeps my dad entertained and helps his memory. He will be 84 years old in a few days and needs something other than television to take his mind off his physical condition. I am his primary caretaker, announcing each new joke as the tweets come in. He remembers many of them and entertains the nurses by doing a little comedy routine when they come to visit. They think it’s cute!