Twitip

I really enjoyed the post from Sonny Gill yesterday exploring the idea of Broadcasting vs Conversing on Twitter. I think he’s on the money and new Twitter users can learn something from his suggestions – however I wanted to ask the question today:

Is it OK to use Twitter as a Broadcasting Tool?

The reason that I ask the question is that while my main Twitter account (@problogger) is pretty interactive – my secondary one (@digitalps – one connected to my photography site) is not – it’s almost purely used as a broadcasting tool.

Not only do I use it for broadcasting – I don’t follow anyone with the account and yet it still has over 1000 followers. Every day a new tweet automatically goes up on the account pointing to a new post on my blog and every day that tweet sends around 100 people to my site).

While I suspect if I were to use that Twitter account more conversationally that it could be even more effective (it is one of my goals at some point) at this point I’m relatively happy with how it’s working – particularly considering I’ve never really promoted @digitalps beyond a couple of tweets and a single post on my blog.

The other reason I ask the question today about using Twitter as a broadcasting tool is that as I look at the top 10 users of Twitter (in terms of how many people follow them) I notice that 3 of the top ten also use Twitter purely as a broadcasting tool. They have 117,025, 51,030 and 36,168 followers.

While they are either famous or have incredible reach in other ways already – they’re sustaining massive amounts of followers and never really interact with any of them (at least not publicly).

I’m not writing this post to suggest that we should all just use Twitter as a broadcast tool – but I guess I wanted to say that it can be done quite successfully – in some circumstances.

So When is it OK to use Twitter as a Broadcasting Tool?

Let me suggest a few times that ‘broadcasting’ might be appropriate on Twitter:

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Broadcasting or Conversing on Twitter? Sonny Gill shares with us some tips on how to have Conversations rather than be a Broadcaster.

So you want to join the Twitter. You think of a cool username, sign up and get excited at the thought that you have complete freedom (140 characters worth) to tweet about whatever you want. You seek out the most popular Twitterers and start following them along with hundreds of others. How simple, you think. Now, the time has come for your first tweet:

“Hey all! Check out my blog www.pleasereadmyblognow.com!”

Hmm, no responses and not many people following you back. Let’s try that again:

“Glad to finally be on Twitter all. Leave some love on my latest post!”

Ok, we get it – it’s about you. Unfortunately, other people aren’t as accepting to your philosophy and won’t listen to you. Why, you ask? It’s because you’ve become a broadcaster – someone who constantly tweets about themselves and their blog/site. You fail to get involved with the community and end up providing little to no value to your network.

Wait – don’t give up on Twitter already because no one is listening to the broadcaster in you. As with any network, group or forum, there are always basic cultural mores to understand that’ll help you become a better communicator. Twitter has a few of its own that will help your experience:

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What Should You Tweet About? In this guest post Michael Martine from Remarkablogger shares some thoughts on the topic. Follow Michael on Twitter @remarkablogger.

You’d think coming up with 140 characters would be easy. Twitter requires us to think differently about how to provide value. In approaching any kind of social media (and you could argue this includes blogging, too), I believe the two winning strategies are to provide value and engage with people. There is no one-size-fits-all tactic to support these strategies, but here’s how I answer the question “what do I tweet about?”

Know what your followers want

I won’t assume that what your followers want are the same things my followers want, but I think it’s safe to say that most people on Twitter want to:

• Get cool links to click on (and distract them from the work they’re supposed to be doing ).
• Get something worth replying to and having a conversation over.
• Get something worth retweeting to their own followers.
• Feel closer to others they like.

In other words, people like to have a good time, have their egos stroked, and be part of a group. If your tweets meet these “Twitter needs”, you’ll grow your followers naturally and accomplish the goals you have for using Twitter (fun, marketing, whatever).

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“How much do I need to Tweet each day to build a successful Twitter presence?”

I get this question a fair bit from new Twitter users and while I think Tweet frequency is an important topic (one I’ll cover in a future post here at TwiTip) I think that there’s another more important aspect of successful use of Twitter that I’ve not heard many people talk about…

Silence….. (cue the crickets and tumbleweed).

Regular tweets may well be an important part of successfully using Twitter but one thing that I’ve found equally important is regularly ‘not tweeting’.

Four reasons come to mind:

1. Pausing in your tweeting creates room for your followers to respond

I once ‘followed’ someone on twitter who tweeted so much that as one of his followers I felt as though he really wasn’t interested in interacting with me because he was really having a conversation with himself. There was no real room for me to say anything because he tweeted so fast and on so many topics that – well I wasn’t needed.

2. Pausing in your tweeting can keep conversations from getting muddled

Tweet too quickly on too many topics and conversations quickly become muddled and confused on Twitter. The problem is that followers see your tweets at different times and respond to them as they see them. As a result you can be getting replies to multiple tweets that you’ve done all at once. Tweet too much and you can forget what you’ve tweeted.
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Have you ever felt excluded by someone talking on the phone in your presence?

Image by lecercle

We’ve all been there. Out with a friend at a cafe having a good time when their phone rings.

They answer it and proceed to talk to the other person in front of you (usually quite loudly) for the next 10 minutes. You kind of get what they’re talking about – but because you’re only getting half the conversation it quickly becomes annoying.

You feel left out! You feel ignored! You feel like ripping the phone from their hand and showing it down their throat!

Or is that just me???

Twitter can be like that. While it’s a great tool for conversation – at times it can also become a little excluding to some of your followers, if you let it be.

Here is a quick Twitter tip that I think could help a lot of people become more effective, inclusive and engaging users of Twitter.

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