1. Participate in group chats. Tuesday nights are “girls night out” or #GNO. You can go to tweetchat.com and sign in with your Twitter username & password then go to the #GNO room and join in. Participate. This exposes you to new people that you otherwise wouldn’t know. I recently participated inSmallBizTrends group chat about Twitter and it was a lot of fun.
  2. Use directories like Twellow or Twitterholic to find people - by keyword or location.
  3. Go to search.twitter.com and put in a hash tag relating to what you do. For me it would be #onlinePR or related terms. See who is writing about it. Follow them if you find them useful.
  4. Reply to people and retweet about the interesting things you learn. So as not to overwhelm people I have another tab opened in Firefox and I use TweetLater (or you can use SocialToo) to space them out a little. READ THE REST HERE = GO LOIS LANE!