How to be a good Twitterer (Twitter explained)
Posted by Oliver Gassner • Monday, March 8. 2010
Kevin Kelley wanted to have some recommendations for good twitterers: Cool Tools: Twitteree Recommendations Wanted
@rainer suggested me and said he was nit sure what a 'good twitterer' was. So I thought: Well, I want to hand on some hints on what I feel is important, when you use Twitter.
1) Show who you are.
- Add an image as your avatar where people will recognize you from other profiles and when they have met you or are going to meet you.
- Make a short bio that tells people what you care about and what content is to be expected from you.
- Link to a site or page on your site where people can learn more about you. Just linking the company page or the main blog page is lame. (and you won't get any Google jouice out of it anyways). If you link to a very special page that you mainly link to from Twitter you will also at least have an indication how many people are interested in info about you.
2) Meet who you have met
- Use the function to find existing frieds on Twitter by letting Twitter have a peek at your e-mail adress book. Twitter is more fun and more valuable if you uzse it to communicate with peple that you already are communicating with on other channels. You might want to repeat this process ever 1 or 2 months as there are new people on Twitter and in your mailbox all the time ;) Set a reminder for this in your task managemernt system! NOW! -- You will be surprised how many people you know are already there.
- Also check the blogs you read regulary if the bloggers are on Twitter. Ususally people link to their Twitter-account in the sidebar or you might want to seach the blogs for indications of a twitterID mentioend. And: Make sure you link to your Twitter account in the sidebar of your blog!
- When you are at an event, make sure that you tweet about it menioning the event-hashtag and also scan the event hashtag in the search for people you met at the event. Follow them, they might follow back.
3) Take it from the net, give it to the net
- When you use information in your blog gained via Twitter: Link to the Twitter account and if possible to the blog of the person you got the hint from.
- If you find useful information on Twitter that might be interesting (or amusing) to your followers: Retweet it using the retweet function.
- Hand on interesting people to follow by creating lists with people who tweet in a certain geographical or topical area. Use the Twitter list function for this.
- Participate in #follolwofriday using the Hastag #ff as the first thing in your tweet, then follow it by a list of twitterers you recomment, nameing them with the @ followed by the twittername so "#ff @rainer @theone @zellmi @dentaku #followfriday" is the way to do it. Naming just one person is fine. YOu might also hint at the topic they are all twittering about.
4) Be relevant
- It might be interesting for some people, that you are just boarding the bus or having coffee or that you wigh everybody a good morning. Usuaslly this is information that you can ADD to a tweet that is really relevant.
When is a tweet relevant? That is very simple. A tweet is relevant, when it motivates people do do domething. So a question might motivate them to answer, a hint to a webpage might male them surf there. The fact that you are having coffee on the bus will usually just make them shrug and say: "So what?" So: Tweet something that can start a dialoge or action elsewhere.
- Also try to point to interesting content via Twitter. And don't only pimp your own content. Also people with 'small' blogs will be very very happy if you send your 4000 followers a hint to their great article.
5) Be comprehensible
- Whgen answering a question that others might not see because the person either Twitters with a 'lock' on theiur stream or because they just don't follow the person, don't just answer 'yes' or 'no'. Make the answer contain enough of the question so that someone just reading your tweet can figure out what the topic is. This way they can decide if they want to join the conversation.
So: @Someone has an new job and twitters about it. You answer:
@someone Congrats (bzzt, wrong)
you answer:
@someone Congrats on your new job as head of marketing
Bingo ;)
OK, what are your tipps on how to be a better twitterer?
(If you also want some 'tech tipps and some hints on what NOT to do on twitter: Tell me in the comments ;))
(If you comment on Buzz: make sure to link a pointer to the buzz URL here in the blog comments thanks ;).)
Update: The Buzz for this is here: http://www.google.com/buzz/114356857651526199159/bn6ySm71KRx/How-to-be-a-good-Twitterer-Twitter-explained
@rainer suggested me and said he was nit sure what a 'good twitterer' was. So I thought: Well, I want to hand on some hints on what I feel is important, when you use Twitter.
1) Show who you are.
- Add an image as your avatar where people will recognize you from other profiles and when they have met you or are going to meet you.
- Make a short bio that tells people what you care about and what content is to be expected from you.
- Link to a site or page on your site where people can learn more about you. Just linking the company page or the main blog page is lame. (and you won't get any Google jouice out of it anyways). If you link to a very special page that you mainly link to from Twitter you will also at least have an indication how many people are interested in info about you.
2) Meet who you have met
- Use the function to find existing frieds on Twitter by letting Twitter have a peek at your e-mail adress book. Twitter is more fun and more valuable if you uzse it to communicate with peple that you already are communicating with on other channels. You might want to repeat this process ever 1 or 2 months as there are new people on Twitter and in your mailbox all the time ;) Set a reminder for this in your task managemernt system! NOW! -- You will be surprised how many people you know are already there.
- Also check the blogs you read regulary if the bloggers are on Twitter. Ususally people link to their Twitter-account in the sidebar or you might want to seach the blogs for indications of a twitterID mentioend. And: Make sure you link to your Twitter account in the sidebar of your blog!
- When you are at an event, make sure that you tweet about it menioning the event-hashtag and also scan the event hashtag in the search for people you met at the event. Follow them, they might follow back.
3) Take it from the net, give it to the net
- When you use information in your blog gained via Twitter: Link to the Twitter account and if possible to the blog of the person you got the hint from.
- If you find useful information on Twitter that might be interesting (or amusing) to your followers: Retweet it using the retweet function.
- Hand on interesting people to follow by creating lists with people who tweet in a certain geographical or topical area. Use the Twitter list function for this.
- Participate in #follolwofriday using the Hastag #ff as the first thing in your tweet, then follow it by a list of twitterers you recomment, nameing them with the @ followed by the twittername so "#ff @rainer @theone @zellmi @dentaku #followfriday" is the way to do it. Naming just one person is fine. YOu might also hint at the topic they are all twittering about.
4) Be relevant
- It might be interesting for some people, that you are just boarding the bus or having coffee or that you wigh everybody a good morning. Usuaslly this is information that you can ADD to a tweet that is really relevant.
When is a tweet relevant? That is very simple. A tweet is relevant, when it motivates people do do domething. So a question might motivate them to answer, a hint to a webpage might male them surf there. The fact that you are having coffee on the bus will usually just make them shrug and say: "So what?" So: Tweet something that can start a dialoge or action elsewhere.
- Also try to point to interesting content via Twitter. And don't only pimp your own content. Also people with 'small' blogs will be very very happy if you send your 4000 followers a hint to their great article.
5) Be comprehensible
- Whgen answering a question that others might not see because the person either Twitters with a 'lock' on theiur stream or because they just don't follow the person, don't just answer 'yes' or 'no'. Make the answer contain enough of the question so that someone just reading your tweet can figure out what the topic is. This way they can decide if they want to join the conversation.
So: @Someone has an new job and twitters about it. You answer:
@someone Congrats (bzzt, wrong)
you answer:
@someone Congrats on your new job as head of marketing
Bingo ;)
OK, what are your tipps on how to be a better twitterer?
(If you also want some 'tech tipps and some hints on what NOT to do on twitter: Tell me in the comments ;))
(If you comment on Buzz: make sure to link a pointer to the buzz URL here in the blog comments thanks ;).)
Update: The Buzz for this is here: http://www.google.com/buzz/114356857651526199159/bn6ySm71KRx/How-to-be-a-good-Twitterer-Twitter-explained
Defined tags for this entry: avatare, e-mail, google, presence, retweet, tipp, twitter, twittererklaert, veranstaltungen, weblogs
