Twitter is a great tool for marketing, promoting and advertising if you are using it right. It offers you an opportunity to deliver crisp messages and your listeners or followers are not over burdened; and if they feel so all they have to do is a simple unfollow.

Well, it isn’t as simple if you are the one losing followers, hence here are a few tips to use the ‘@’ reply in an engaging manner to create conversations and retweets.

The traditional use of the ‘@’ symbol is to reply to someone’s tweet. For e.g.

My Tweet thru @freya3377: Trying to figure out Linked In to see how I can use it for marketing and promoting myself and my work. Anyone have tips?

Reply by @devakishor: @freya3377 The best tutorial/guide as to how we can use Linkedin http://bit.ly/okko7

However this reply can only be viewed by the recipient and those who follow both of you. It does not show on the public timeline. But if you put the @twitterID anywhere but at the start of the tweet or just added a character like ‘>’ at the start of the tweet, it would show to everyone.

E.g. – Hey @freya3377 The best tutorial/guide as to how we can use Linkedin http://bit.ly/okko7
OR
> @freya3377 The best tutorial/guide as to how we can use Linkedin http://bit.ly/okko7

This is a good way to reply and yet involve more people in your conversations. Remember though that this is best done only for conversations that you think would be relevant to people else use Direct Messages to avoid overloading peoples streams.

Another way to engage your audience and also let people know you are talking or sharing about them is to include their twitter ID’s in your tweet. So when you are tweeting about a blog or article you are reading, use the authors or company’s twitter handle in your tweet.

E.g. – Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn by @guykawasaki This post was a great help! http://bit.ly/okko7

This does multiple things –

1. It connects your followers with interesting people and your tweets become referrals.
2. The people whose blog or article you have shared knows you did so and you make friends!
3. The author or writer retweets your message to their followers.
4. Your followers can ask questions or reply directly to the author or writer with ease.
5. Most importantly you have become an initiator of conversations.

Twitter is not just about ‘What you are doing?’ but rather about creating a comfort space where people can share and interact. Do you use the ‘@’ in other ways?

Photo credit: Jeff Turner

Twitter today is ‘the’ place to be; it’s where everyone seems to hang out. With more than a million users signing up every month, it’s seeing phenomenal growth. When using twitter you can talk about anything, air your views & opinions, promote a product or service, give breaking news… you get the picture right… As long as your message is within the 140 character limit you can say anything.

A lot of companies and people are using twitter to promote themselves; maybe not directly but yeah, twitter helps them track people’s opinions, get feedback, keep in touch, etc. This has become so important that companies have started to hire people with a job role that just requires them to be on twitter. Celebrities are taking to twitter too. It’s a way for them to interact with their fans, build a relationship and if they aren’t doing it already soon they will be promoting their brands.

I find twitter a brilliant tool for me to keep in touch with my friends, send them messages (all in one go), promote myself & my work and network with the right people. However I think this has to be done with a certain sense of responsibility since the world can see that I said and I am influencing people. Of course you may say I am entitled to my opinion and if someone wants to believe me or follow me blindly, that’s their problem. True! No doubt but it still is my social responsibility to not give people the wrong notions.

Let me give you an example – Gul Panag, an Indian actress who I quite admire as she doesn’t fit the typical actress mould (Links below)is quite active on twitter. Yesterday Gul tweeted about her bullet (bike) being delivered at the set after being serviced and how she was looking forward to riding home at 2 am. Am sure she was bombarded by her fans with questions on which model, how she rode, what speed and what not. One reply to a question I did notice was about the type of helmet. Let me paste the messages for you here…

gulpanag – @pleomorphous sort of.. It’s a hybrid actually, full face visor , bomber pilot type
pleomorphous – @gulpanag Thats what I meant by “fancy half-face helmet” 🙂
gulpanag – @pleomorphous it’s ok I am a safe rider. What’s good for a fighter jet pilot is certainly good for me:)

Now like I was saying before tweeting with responsibility is important and even more so for a celeb as there are a lot of people listening and celebs can influence them quite a bit. Celebs are also trendsetters. To me this attitude of Gul was not acceptable, she was telling her 2,664 followers that it was ok to wear a helmet that makes you look cool, no matter that it doesn’t protect your head. I’m not sure what others had to say but my reply and another in my timeline are below.

pleomorphous – @gulpanag I applaud your optimism, all the best. 🙂
freya3377 – @gulpanag @pleomorphous Ofcourse Gul, the bullet open to the elements is as safe as a jet and comes with a parachute 🙂
gulpanag – @freya3377 you ride one I assume, from your knowledge;)
freya3377 – @gulpanag Ofcourse 🙂 think it might be a good idea 4 u to promote safely when riding. 🙂

Surprisingly Gul says on her site “the single greatest contribution every celebrity- film sport or any other kind can make is to lead by example” – Read more

So the gist of my post is that tweeple should tweet but with responsibility. What do you think?

Please leave a comment or tweet me.

Gul’s Official Site
Gul on Wikipedia