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Micro-blogging for Bloggers (ii) – Personality over Brand?

In this second installment of her invaluable guide to micro-blogging for ‘old school’ bloggers, Caitlin Fitzsimmons examines the thorny issue of how to build “community” and exhorts us all to: “Give Back!”

Content + Context

Although Twitter has replaced RSS for some users, it is a mistake for content producers to use it in the same way. You see many news sites, and some bloggers, using Twitter as just another RSS feed. This means that every single tweet is a link back to one of their own blog posts or articles. No context and no conversation.

No matter how much I like a blog, I won’t follow someone on Twitter if they only ever tweet links to their own blog. I’ve discussed this with other Twitter users on numerous occasions so I know that I am not alone in feeling this way. Since the blog post tweets can be automated, it makes me wonder if there is even a real person there reading other people’s tweets and their own replies and direct messages.

The beauty of Twitter is that it is interactive. If RSS is content, then Twitter is content plus context. I am more likely to click on someone’s link if I know a bit about them.

For this reason, I prefer to follow people than brands. I do follow some brands, but usually ones that do show personality and have conversations. It’s called social media for a reason!

How do you show personality? Tweet your thoughts, not just links to your blog posts, and engage in conversation. Just as some of the most successful blogs are focused on a single topic, some people advocate keeping your tweets focused on a topic. I’m not quite that disciplined and personally, I don’t think there’s any harm in being well-rounded!

Conversation is a great way to engage people and forge connections with your potential readers. You can easily talk to someone without clogging up your Twitter stream and you can even talk to people who are not yet following you. If you start a tweet with @niltiac then not all your followers will see the tweet – only people who follow both of us, or who go directly to your Twitter profile page to see all your recent tweets. However, if @niltiac is midway through a tweet then all your followers will see it. In both cases, I will see it even if I don’t currently follow you. If you want to take it truly offline, you can send me a DM instead, but only if I’m following you.

Give back

The best way to build community is to act like one already exists and be an active member of it. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, ask not what your followers can do for you, but ask what you can do for your followers.

Tweet links to interesting content from around the web, including other people’s blog posts. ‘Retweet’ interesting tweets from other people, with proper credit – like @erikrolfsen has done with my tweet here. Respond to requests from other bloggers to leave comments or vote up content on StumbleUpon or Digg. Add interesting blogs to your RSS reader and link to them on your blog. Recommend interesting people to follow on Fridays using the #followfriday hashtag (or consider using the ‘Follow Friday’ meme in a different way like I do on my blog).

If you do this, people may be inspired to do the same for you, or you can make other calls to action. When I applied for Tourism Queensland’s Best Job in the World – island caretaker at Hamilton Island – earlier this year, I asked my Twitter followers to rate my video. Dozens of people retweeted my request and although I did not make the finals, mine was one of only a handful of videos with over 1,000 views and four stars. Similarly, I know many bloggers have found Twitter an effective way to mobilise votes for popularity-based blog awards.

A word of warning

Twitter is addictive, especially if you use it in the immersive, interactive way I recommend. Your life may never be the same again.

It is a good idea to set some boundaries. I am a huge fan of Twitter but there are many other things competing for my time and I have many other goals in life. As a result, I’m trying (not always successfully) to impose a limit on my Twitter time. Since I’m following almost 1,000 people, I could not read everything in my Twitter stream without it utterly taking over my whole life. Instead. I dip in and out, absorb it in an ambient way, and check my @replies and DMs. I am a reasonably heavy user of Twitter but I also don’t want to bombard or bore my followers.

Another unintended side effect of Twitter is that you may be less likely to blog. As I said at the start of this post, tweeting is a form of blogging. For many bloggers, it can end up satisfying the urge that would ordinarily prompt them to write a blog post. Suw Charman has written about this effect at her personal blog Chocolate and Vodka.