Tuesday, May 1, 2012

How to be a RockStar In Twitter


Let me start this post by saying that I am not personally a Twitter rockstar(not yet!); however, I am friends with a lot of people who are, and I’ve been studying their tweeting style for a long time, and I feel like I have a good idea about how a person can develop into a Twitter  rockstar .


Let me also say that you don’t have to have a ton of followers to be a Twitter  rockstar. Since people typically want to follow the  rockstars, they, by default, usually have a lot of followers, but there are always exceptions. Always!


Usually on this type of post, someone will leave me a comment that says, “There are no rules on Twitter, who are you to give everyone rules?” – Let me address this now. It’s true; there are no rules on Twitter. If there ever was a rule, it would probably be to just be yourself. That is the best rule I can think of. These aren’t rules, this is just me sharing my experiences and what I’ve observed from being on Twitter almost everyday for a year, nothing more. 


7 Tips for Becoming a Twitter Rockstar


Have the Basics Covered
Twitter badasses always have their basics covered, no question about it. That means an avatar with their picture (which they don’t change very often), a nice Twitter background and a strong bio with their real name listed in the name field. You won’t find a true Twitter badass that doesn’t have these things done.


Tweet Consistently
Twitter  rockstars tweet consistently, for sure. We all get busy, on days when you don’t much time, just send a tweet to say hello to your followers or send a quick RT. To be a Twitter  rockstar, you have to be committed to Twitter and your followers.


Tweet Interesting and Relevant Content
If you want to become a Twitter  rockstar, you have to tweet great content. Unless you want to take the time to always find that content on your own, you must start filtering your tweets. This is how you filter Tweets: Install Tweetdeck, Seesmic or any one of several Twitter clients and create a column specifically for those peeps that tweet great content so that you won’t miss their tweets. By doing this, in addition to finding your own content to tweet, you will always have great content that you can RT at your fingertips.


It’s All About The Relationships You Build
Twitter  rockstars all understand that it isn’t about how many people follow you, it’s about how you interact with the ones that do. It’s important to be personal and get to know your followers. If you don’t do this, people will not view you as a real person. For example, @GuyKawasaki has over 200,000 followers, but to me, he is a robot (I mean, is he a real person?). He rarely interacts with anyone, and as a result, a lot of people don’t consider him a real part of the Twitter community.


Show Twitter Acts of Kindness
True Twitter  rockstars understand very well that their power is in their kindness. They go out of their way to perform Twitter random acts of kindness, and everyone loves them for it. They are truly what makes Twitter the warm and fuzzy place that it is for so many of us. If you would like to see a list of common Twitter acts of kindness, click here.


Think for Yourself and Be Confident (in a humble kind of way)
Twitter  rockstars are not pressured by anyone else, they think for themselves and they are humble. They don’t get caught up in negativity, they don’t get talked into RT’ing posts that they don’t want to send out and they always think about the value they are providing to their followers. This all shows in the quality of their tweets. This is veryimportant.


Find a Niche
This is not essential for becoming a Twitter  rockstar, although many Twitter  rockstars do find a niche and work it. For example, @AskAaronLee is known for tweeting the best Twitter articles, @krystynchong is known for the music she tweets, @Minervity tweets geeky and design stuff and @kim is known for her #artwalk tweets. Do you have a niche?


There are a lot of Twitter  rockstars in the Twitterverse. I could not list them all here; however, if you are just starting to filter your tweets, and if you need a place to start with good content, here is a short list of peeps to follow who definitely fit this description:

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