Being a Good Twitter Citizen

Here are some ideas on how to build relationships with the people on Twitter, without coming off like a spammer.

If you have knowledge about a particular subject(s), and you feel like sharing, how can you find people that are receptive to your generosity? One way is by listening with the right keywords.

Search Twitter for these keywords:

(1) “Does anyone know” / or simply “anyone know”
(2) “Can someone”
(3) “Who knows of” / “Who knows a”
(4) Anyone want / Anyone need

Using a program like TweetDeck (or rss feeds), you can see many searches simultaneously which makes this ‘listening’ process much easier:

Example:

See you could help @EricKrassinger find a fringe blog, or it looks like @jakowenko needs an iPhone app built. If you plug in a keyword of your choice, “anyone know + blog“, you get conversations focused on blogging.

If you are looking to use Twitter to promote your product, why wouldn’t you listen for these kind of keywords. You help people find what they need, when they need it most.

(If you really want to be advanced. Gather all the RSS feeds of the best searches for your company/product/app, put them together in Nourish RSS to Email feed and email them to your boss, or board every week or so.)