Twitter is About Relationships: Prove It
by Steven Rossi on March 20, 2009 in On the Web
I’m a big fan of Twitter. I’m an even bigger fan of using Twitter to build relationships. A few weeks ago, I added a couple new Twitterers to my list of followers. One of these new guys, @Aadom, posted a link to his blog on which he had made a post asking a simple question about Chicago. I figured I could give him a quick answer to the question he had asked, and I did. After I commented on the post, I returned to Twitter and sent him a tweet mentioning that I had commented on his blog. Soon after, he thanked me and followed me back. We had a short, general, and cordial interaction.
I think that this small example shows something about online communication. Much has been said in the last few weeks about the value of online community, sparked to a large extent by Shane Hipps’ now-(in)famous comments. To affirm his words, I’ll add that I frequently comment on a blog or send an @reply but generally won’t go any further than that. However, by answering @Aadom’s question then sending him a tweet, I let him know that I was genuinely interested in communicating with him rather than just selfishly talking to an abyss. Furthermore, he responded to my two attempts and therefore showed his appreciation for my efforts (however small they were). This type of personal, two-way communication is standard in the offline world but is much rarer in online interaction. Rather than personally talking to individuals, we often speak online in a megaphone-style proclamation — especially with Twitter.
So while I’m not presenting this comment-tweet method as a formula by which everyone must follow to be a good social media user or an attack on two fronts which will force the victim to give in and respond, I hope to give a good example of a habit of communication which we must develop. I’m also not suggesting that online community can compete with offline community, as I’m not really sure where I stand on that debate. Furthermore, this brings up other important issues like consistency in your online name/persona or Seth Godin-style boldness in marketing yourself, but for now we’ll stick with this (somewhat important) idea of repetitive, multi-format communication. So although I don’t claim to have all the answers, I do think we must seriously consider this issue. What other ways exist by which we could improve our online relationships?