Twitip

The following is Part 3 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow Crystal @CrystalsQuest) You can read Part 1 of Lessons From The Evolution of Blogging – Journaling and Part 2 – Link Lists here.

The Blogging community grew bigger as more blogs were started, and existing blogs shared the love by linking to them.  Of course if you know SEO, you’d know that this meant the search engines started paying attention to these, and more people started discovering blogs. The community stopped being small, but started to distinguish between the well known and established bloggers, and the newcomers who were still learning the ropes.

This is where conversations come in.  Bloggers would read a new post by someone, with their editorial comments on it, and write an answering post on their own blogs. Naturally, this added fuel to the SEO fire, as cross linking gave blog sites some serious weight.  As the art took off and gained momentum, and more people wanted to start blogging themselves, software started making it easier to create and update your blogs, and eventually the ability to comment was born.

Enter the era of interactivity. (Don’t try saying that after a few drinks, ok?) Bloggers could now do more than just put their opinions out there – they could get feedback and, more importantly, develop a following.  For the bloggers that had come from the beginning, this was a major step forward – they could write responses, as well as just diarize their thoughts.  They could build their own reputation and grow their audience.

Twitter uses the @reply for exactly the same thing.  This is the essential tool for making contact with people you’re following, who are asking questions you know the answers to, or to catch the attention of people you’d like to connect with.

@replies turn twitter from a one way monologue into a dialogue.  They’re an important part of any twitter user’s toolbox.

The lesson you need to take from the successful thought-leaders of the blogging world in this stage, though, is the importance of holding conversations that include, and don’t exclude, your other followers.  Have you ever stood waiting at a party where someone you wanted to talk to was so involved in a one-on-one discussion that the rest of the room might as well not have existed?  That’s what you want to avoid.  Don’t cold-shoulder the room.

Remember that not everyone will know what you’re replying to when you send a response to someone else – try to phrase your reply so it’s not one-sided and people have no idea what you’re talking about.  Put it in context, like the second example tweet below.

@questionasker Pirates of Carribbean. Years ago.

@questionasker – last movie I went to see was yrs ago: Pirates of Carribbean”

Anyone reading the second one knows what you’re answering, and may even join the conversation.

Finally, It’s important to remember that, just like any party, conversation should be mixed with mingling, too.  Keep giving out comments and links that others can appreciate and/or react to (which can start more conversations). You build the community, AND your followers, that way.