Twitip

Photo by Macarena C.

If I had to list my top 10 ways that I’ve grown my own Twitter network – somewhere towards the top of that list I would share this simple – yet powerful tip.

Ask Questions

The act of consistently asking quality questions on Twitter can have a massive impact upon your network. Here’s 6 reasons why questions are so powerful:

1. Questions Signal to Followers that you are Interested

So many people use Twitter purely to ’shout’ at their followers. They rarely make space for people to interact. Questions send a signal to your followers (and potential followers) that you’re not just on Twitter to have a monologue – but that you’re interested in dialogue and conversation.

2. Questions Prompt Conversation

I find Twitter to be most effective when conversations evolve on it. One of the best ways to ‘get people talking’ is to ask them a question – particularly if it’s about themselves and their experience.

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I asked this of my followers on Twitter a while back and the result was fairly split (although perhaps it ended up being that people used Twitter slightly more during the week) but I wanted to ask it again in a more formal Poll.

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I’d also be interested to hear whether your use of Twitter changes on the weekend? Does it become more personal, is it more about ‘catching up’ on sharing some links that you didn’t get to during the week, are your tweets perhaps a little more ‘inebriated’ on the weekend ?

Interested to see the poll results but also hear your comments on this one!

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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