Once you’ve been active on Twitter for awhile, you will begin to realize that the micro-blogging platform is not just about you and your tweets: it’s about everyone. You could say it’s a huge chat room, and everyone is vying for attention. One of my friends thinks that Twitter is more like a high school popularity contest than anything else. But one thing is for sure: If you’re only talking about yourself, no one wants to listen. Talk about relevant issues to a target audience and people start to follow you and listen to what you’re tweeting. In such a way, Twitterville has become the defacto real-time platform not just for communication, but also for the spread of information and has now even become a virtual center for global learning. I recently blogged with advice on what you should tweet about. Going beyond that, whether you are a business or a professional, it’s important to have a content strategy that realizes that everyone’s content is King on Twitter. Here’s 4 reasons why:
1) No matter how much of a thought leader you or your company is in any given industry, no one has a monopoly on ideas in this user-generated content era of the Web 2.0 Internet. In order to keep mindshare, you need to be tweeting at a certain frequency, so this means that, for the majority of people, you will need to be tweeting content other than your own in order to so.
2) People want to follow people they don’t know who they see as a resource of information. Become the resource, by sharing everyone’s information in a fashion that is relevant to your target audience, and you will certainly win new followers.
3) ReTweeting someone else’s content is not only the highest form of respect you can show someone in Twitter, but it also enables you to potentially create a new relationship by engaging with the person who sent out the original tweet. Think of it as standing on the shoulders of giants. It enables you to get noticed by a particular person in a room of millions of voices. It also allows you to share an invaluable perspective that has already been filtered by someone who you respect and trust.
4) Celebrating the value of other people’s tweets by creating a relevant Twitter List is another sign of giving respect in realizing that everyone’s content is King on Twitter, and this alone, similar to a ReTweet, can potentially spark a new conversation with the person you added to your list while providing another great resource of information to all.
In creating your Twitter content strategy, start thinking about sharing information, providing value, and becoming a resource to others, and then your understanding of why everyone’s content on Twitter is King will lead you to obtain not only more followers, but most importantly, more engagements and opportunities to develop more relationships with real and relevant people, whether they be future friends or even mentors…or future customers.
