How do you prefer to introduce yourself to people, through what you do or by who you are?

Your answer will dictate your path!

Watch how others apply this. When on Twitter next time, observe who’s talking about: what they do, who they are, how they refer to others and their feed vibe…Lots of gray areas here, no right or wrong way, only effective or non-effective, congruent or non-congruent, possessive or…well I think you get it!!

Either way, You Choose!

Here are a few points that have worked for me:

Invest time in reading people’s bios and tweet hx. I’m a big proponent that at the end of the day, we are all building one gigantic resume on Twitter.

You don’t have to automatically follow everyone who follows you. If you are going to be as reciprocating as I feel I am sometimes then at the very least tune out most Corporations , spammers and scammers. One of the issues I find hard to deal with on Twitter is the signal to noise ratio. Improving that should always be at the forefront of your to-do’s.

Start to create a small network of users that you can identify and genuinely enjoy sharing information and comments with. If you feel like your are working hard, something is wrong. It should feel like you are having fun doing this. The guilty kind of fun!!

Participate on your Twitter buddies’ blogs and sites, comment when you have something to say, and don’t ever feel you have to reciprocate. Being genuine is the key to this approach.

Do not ever judge anyone by the numbers of followers they have or do not have. Nothing could be more discriminating and neglecting to the Social Media creed than to judge someone  based solely on their popularity or lack thereof. Numbers don’t mean a thing!

Assume someone is reading your stuff, because most likely someone is.

Don’t be a douche bag and tell others what they should do. If you are asked, then give them your humble opinion and always remember that in this massive experiment called Social Media, there are no experts, only loud voices – My bud @kencamp taught me that. Now! Do realize, that there are people way ahead of the game than you are… pay your respects, learn from them and move on.

Don’t be anyone’s fan. Be an admirer and a collaborator. Fans think their idol can do no wrong, Admirers collaborate and contribute. Be an admirer!

Put in your time. Manage your time. Be disciplined and patient.

Don’t RT anything you haven’t checked out, regardless of the source. Do your homework!

Be polite and reply to genuine @replies and DM’s. Do not reply or DM spammers. Those 30 seconds could’ve been more productive doing something else.

As a rule for every one tweet related to your business, twenty others should be to build value for the community.  Examples of this are:  A combination of RTng comments and valuable links, tweeting someones valuable take and insight on a subject, a follow request for someone else, recognizing someone’s achievements, publicly invite someone new to Twitter, etc.

I know the moment I hit publish I’ll realize I forgot something, but hey!  That’s the way it goes sometimes