Credit: Sociable Boost
Twitter is not a one-way street. Your content gets retweeted by a follower, and they get crickets? Thanking followers should be something you incorporate into your daily tweets.
Some folks think “thanks for the RT” is just noise and clutters the stream. Others think it’s a hassle and are on the fence about whether it’s good practice or not. In my blog post last week “How Not To Use Triberr,” the issue of thanking followers popped up in comments.
Adam Toporek who writes Customers That Stick and Ralph Dopping, the Canadian architect who writes The View From Here, both suggested that acknowledging followers for a blog post retweet was not a practice they thought they should engage in.
So, I politely disagreed and thanked them for the idea for today’s post and hope they come back to lend a few cents below (and you, too, of course!).
Two Caveats
Before I share my reasons below, let’s review a few things…
- There are MANY ways to thank someone for their acknowledgment. You can comment on their blog in return; you can RT their RT with a thanks at the end; you can follow them on Twitter and say thanks; you can introduce them to someone else in your stream to ensure they’ve met; you can #FollowFriday; you can make up your own way to show appreciation!
- Peeps like A-lister bloggers and authors who have tens of thousands of Twitter followers are unable to thank or acknowledge mostly anyone. The stream is so unmanageable especially when you’re publishing top-quality content. I get that, and I don’t expect community leaders to attempt to do a one-off thanks; not possible. Thus, what’s below is for we who are in building mode – newbies, mid-tier and less-than-12-month bloggers, and peeps who are growing their Twitter stream.
8 Twitter Tips
Here are my 8 reasons why I believe you should thank peeps for their engagement, acknowledgment, and ‘raderie on Twitter:
1. Twitter helps you build community. When you thank someone for an RT, a comment, a compliment, a supportive gesture, etc. it shows you’re paying attention, listening and appreciate someone for their time to engage.
2. When someone engages with your blog by sending along your content, that means they’ve taken time to either read, comment, share, and take the first step to build a relationship. Isn’t a “thanks for that” peanuts when you think of your content being shared by a relative stranger?
3. When you don’t know someone who has RT’d a post of yours, it offers you the opportunity to address them by name, say, “nice to tweet you,” and thank them at the same time. You just accomplished a trio of good community.
4. What profession are you in? If you’re in a specialty niche, customer service, like Adam is, then you ought to be building community with like- minded customer-service peeps. If one happens to find your blog and you speak the same language, then all the more reason to acknowledge them and say thanks.
5. Your stream can never be littered unless you’re spamming it with rotten content. Who is the judge of what litter looks like in a Twitter stream? Has anyone told you that you put out garbage…that a “thank you for acknowledging me with an RT” is trash? Absolutely not. Gratitude is not litter; it humanizes your brand and makes you personable.
6. Why would you regard “thanks so much” as noise? Noise and clutter…hmm. I mentioned that I was choosing not to re-tweet posts from bloggers writing about Halloween family dinners and baby products. These topics are not for my brand or my community. Were I to consistently retweet these to my followers, this would be regarded as noise and a dilution of my brand.
7. Are you self-employed and building a company? If Ralph is an architect blogging for some fun and not to boost his business (because he works for a firm), and I’m in B-to-B social media marketing and PR, then absolutely you betcha I’m going to thank people for acknowledging my content. When someone RTs my content, I recognize immediately if they are new to my stream. That’s how tuned in I am to my followers. Because my followers are organic I have had measured growth, and that’s enabled me to monitor the stream well.
8. What are your goals as a blogger? If you want to be an influencer, thought leader, earn more comments, build a community, monetize and sell products, earn credibility, get ranked, etc. then you need subscribers, right? A thank you to those who pass along your content seems minimal when it comes to these larger goals.
What did I miss; do you agree or disagree?
