Borrowing a page from Buddhism, the quality of relationships on Twitter, like any relationship, are based on three things:

  • First, an honest understanding of one’s own capabilities.
  • Second, the ability to listen and learn.
  • And those two factors, put together, determine the ultimate potential of the relationship.

I’ve worked on “search as a retail support tool” projects for close to 20 years. I’m not a PR person, I’m not a brand manager, nor am I a social media expert. But I try to add value, and here’s how:

  • As a perpetual student. I follow people who demonstrate domain expertise. I read their tweets, sometimes follow their links, and occasionally I ask a question (after trying to find the answer first).  Between following people and using search, Twitter has made me much more aware of the back story behind many of today’s headlines.
  • As a curator. I’m a voracious reader and I try to share links to interesting things. I also try to connect like-minded people together. I hope to add value and demonstrate domain expertise to people who either follow me or discover me via search.
  • As an analyst. I review the revenue opportunities of new approaches and new technologies, as well as the potential pitfalls. I know a single morning of angry phone calls can wipe out six months of hard effort from dedicated team members. Why take stupid chances?
  • As a demo platform. With attention spans getting shorter than ever, I believe more and more people are from Missouri, the “Show Me” state. People want to see demonstrations and explanatory videos to help them become more comfortable with technology.
  • As a contact center. I could not manage the same number and diversity of conversations if each one were done over the phone. While I have many short discussions with people using Twitter, it’s useful to shift some of those conversations to DM, and if warranted, to email or phone. Businesses who track their contact center costs use a similar strategy to shift less-profitable yet important conversations.
  • As product research. You may notice many of my links are “go.twavl.com” links instead of “bit.ly” or “ow.ly”. I’ve been working with Google for over a year on a project that turns any domain into its own short link namespace. Also, after noticing the success @jbernoff and @pogue had with using @reply to unlock the value of their followers (Josh’s example here, David Pogue’s example here), I developed Private @ Reply, a way for organizations to get instant replies from lists of followers even if those followers are not hardcore Twitter users. Using Twitter along with tools like Clicktale let me go beyond what people say and understand more about what people do.

A few people have noted that I tweet too often - or sometimes change direction on them unexpectedly. There’s a simple solution. Although I would hate to see it happen, one can simply opt-out. In the future, you’re going to see more people opt out, as people learn how to improve their Twitter listening skills.

I hope to see you on Twitter. If you like what you’ve seen so far, please add me as a contact either on Twitter, LinkedIn or (surprise!) Google. (I’m also on Facebook but I’m trying to track down a bug where vanity URLs don’t work if you’re not logged in.) Also, one of the keys to Twitter is to not only add people you know, but add people you’d like to know. I work with Jeremiah Owyang on his “Corporate Social Managers” and Melissa Hourigan on “MediaOnTwitter”, you should check them out.

So, how do you use Twitter?