Please pay attention Twitter business users.  Twitter is not a mass medium like TV or radio or print.  Micro-blogging is NOT about pushing your messages out to as many people as you can.  Micro-blogging is a tool that helps you communicate with the people around you so that you can find and build better offline relationships.  There is no free lunch or magic bullet here.  You still need to do the work.

For God sake, please turn off your auto-responders.  I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t care about your free giveaway or your one-time special offer or the discounted products you sell.  Really, I don’t care.  I don’t care because you are already showing me you don’t care one bit about me. Why then should I care about you?

For instance, @Ryenterprises looks like and may be a really nice guy.  But on Twitter, he is failing.

Seriously?  @Ryenterprises, no disrespect with this, but I’m not interested and I’ve stopped following you.

Relationships are Like Onions
My background in communication theory has helped me learn how to navigate the social market place and use tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the Ning networks to reach my business development and marketing goals.

One of my favorite ideas was developed in 1973 by Irwin Altman and the late Dalmas Taylor, both of which were communication and psychology university scholars. Their concept of Social Penetration discusses how relational closeness is developed through the gradual process of mutual disclosure of personal information. The process starts with the sharing of superficial layers of information (i.e. what you do for a living, where you live, your hobbies, etc.) and than moves to the deeper layers of what makes us who we are (like our core values, our faith, our belief structure).  Altman and Taylor describe this process as gradually peeling away layers of an onion.

How does all this translate to Twitter and not peeving me off with SPAM offers?  In simple form, we build relationships by sharing who we are and creating a context with those around us which makes it safe for them to share who they are with us.

Back to @Ryenterprises.  Frankly, I have no idea who he is and that’s the problem.  Yet, before he’s even invested time to politely introduce himself,  @Ryenterprises is asking me to do something for him.  What’s worse, he is asking me over and over and over again.  Because he is being pushy, my initial reaction is to be annoyed.  Think about it.  Why on earth would I ever want to by something from someone I don’t know, who is bombarding me with messages that annoy me?  Get the picture?

Here’s 5 things you can do on Twitter to change your strategy and use the idea of Social Penetration to your advantage.  I hope this helps you meet more people and build more productive relationships so you can drive your business…

1. Turn off the auto responder. You don’t need to respond to every one who follows you.
2. When you find someone you want to respond to, send them an @reply rather than a direct message. Have an open conversation to help them get out there.
3. Take time to look at their profile or read their blog before you reply. You’ll get tidbits of valuable info about who they are and what they care about.
4. Share something about yourself and ask them something about themselves.  Again, use tidbits from their superficial layers of information (which happen to be found on their profiles in most cases) to start the conversation
5. Be polite and don’t push for anything right off the bat.  In general, people don’t want to be sold too.  Focus on the relationship first and when and if they are ready to learn about what you have to offer them, they’ll ask.

[photo credit: ***TRiPod on flickr.com]

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