@atomicpoet's Guide To Twitter Nirvana

For once, I'll shut my mouth and let someone else speak about the secrets of successful Twittering. Here is a collection of thoughts of @atomicpoet which I compiled from his Twitter stream. It's about what you can expect from Twitter and what Twitter expects from you.

First, what matters most is quality of followers, not quantity. This is true for any other site, and it is applicable to Twitter.

What you got to do is find content that excites these "quality" followers. Make THESE people happy.

Out of the thousands of followers you have on Twitter, the quality followers will actually only number maybe a few hundred -- at the most.

Now, what are "quality" followers? They retweet, they share news, they interact with you on a regular basis. Impress THESE people.

Before you do anything else, find quality content. Here's the golden rule: if it impacts YOU, it will probably impact someone else.

Once you find quality content, schedule it. This creates presence on twitter, creates anticipation, and spreads it to more people.

The shorter the tweet, the better. Short tweets encourage retweets.

Now, if someone responds to your links, even if it is just a "LOL", respond back. Create conversation. Engage with the "quality" followers.

Do NOT thank people for retweets. It's a waste of time and clouds the feed. If you want to thank them, retweet them in kind.

If you retweet, make it be something you yourself would tweet. Your followers always want good quality content.

iFrames, whether it is a Digg or ow.ly iframe, encourages these "quality" followers to spread the media.

Remember, you are not looking to impress the "casual" follower. You are looking to impress the quality follower.

What you need is a mechanism to make it easier for quality followers to share media. The ow.ly bar and DiggBar does those things.

Once they are at the site, these people use the bar to retweet, submit to Digg, Reddit, SU, or send an email. It works for them.

Now, as with many awesome inventions, what may be good for one person is loathed by another. Content creators HATE iframes...

BTW, what kind of game is social media? It's kind of like Secret Santa. You are looking for partners in win-win.

Content creator, meet social media guy. You both love quality content. Let's work together!

One final note. Twitter is NOT social media. Nor is social media anything new.

Twitter is one interesting component of social media, but it is a tiny fraction of what it is.

You would find @atomicpoet blogging at atomicpoet, and while I was on his blog, the post How I Find Amazing Content didn't fail to catch my attention. Here, he describes how to find quality content. He is also a must follow on Twitter.

If you liked this post, then tweet this for the benefit of your "quality" followers. And if you are a first time visitor, subscribe to my RSS feed.