How to make it easy for people to talk to you on Twitter

Many of you will know that I am a massive fan of Twitter, and probably am seen as a bit of a veteran of the medium. I’ve clocked up a few tweets in the last 3+ years and seen one or two things… However, it was brought home to me recently, the importance of engaging on Twitter – and not just chatting to the people you know. It wasn’t just me who learnt this lesson – find out why Jon had to apologise for not being on twitter recently. I’ve always been good at chatting to folks, some people might say too good…. However, remember that Twitter is both a networking and a marketing medium. Which means that you need to have a variety of content. Now, most people will agree with me – yes, some chatting and yes some sharing of articles and other people’s tweets. Of course, I totally agree with this. But you need more than this. You need some personal content, about what you are doing. Stuff, that invites people to start to talk to you. After all, in a face-to-face networking event, you wouldn’t either not say a word, or just talk business. It’s the same on Twitter. This personal content, is what I call relationship hooks. What they do is enable others to start a conversation with you. Just as if you were at a networking event… For example, these are great examples of tweets, which enable you to start a conversation with them: Thinking about what to have for dinner? What do you suggest? Looking forward to watching the tennis tonight Won a new client today – going to be busy! This is a great ….. match – who else is watching and enjoying it? As you would expect, I follow a large proportion of accountants and lawyers on twitter – and many of these are non-partners in practice. Sadly, it’s almost impossible to start a conversation with the vast majority of these people as all they tweet are press releases, articles about their technical subject and retweets which are more of the same. What if I was a potential client? How long before I thought ‘sod it’, let’s talk to one of your competitors as they are easier to talk to? How often do you remember to put relationship hooks into your tweets?