The 80/20 Rule of Twitter

Basically the premise of this is 80% of the time you should be talking about someone other than yourself or your business. The other 20% is you sharing your own content. When I look at a business new to Twitter I often discover they are primarily sharing their own content such as promotions, press releases or events. However, they aren’t engaging by retweeting other’s content, replying to folks, or offering general outreach to users with questions via social media monitoring.

Your goal should be to share content from other sources via retweets, replies, or direct links to their content. The reply is intended to connect to folks directly in hopes of answering a  question, solving a problem, or commenting on their own activity. Go take a look at someone new to twitter and see how many @replies and retweets they have. If it appears they are not that active and they are just sharing their own content they truly do not see the value nor have they made the right time investment. Furthermore, they may see Twitter as just another channel for press releases and promotions. Twitter offers such an effective way to touch potential consumers and influencers that it’s worth a small investment of your time to see what works for your business.

Finding content to share

Assuming you have already researched where your existing and potential customers are spending time online, you can then use that insight to find and create content that would be relevant to them.  For example, if I was an IT services provider, I would provide content relevant to the potential end user of my services such as a Systems Admin. Why not share HPUX maintenance tips to demonstrate the expertise you have on staff?

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