What is twitter influence ?

There are many things that make one successful and acclaimed . On twitter a measure of your effective impact is called influence . More your influence , more acclaimed and trustworthy you and your tweets are . There are many varied ways to define this , and this has been the object of many a debate and the apple of many an eye .Everyone on twitter aspires to further their influence on a daily basis and get recognized and respected. For some tweeps it is the be all and end all . Let us try and talk about this today in our post .

When one gets on twitter , the first thing that one does is to find out who are the best and why . Then we try and emulate them and aspire to get there too . There are many varied measures of success on twitter . For a celeb it would be the follower count , the ongoing tussles between Kutcher , Spears and GaGa are testimony to that , and on the sidelines we have media outlets like CNN and tech evangelists like Pete Cashmore fighting it out to top twitter . We have people ranging from Presidents to Queens to actors and sports-persons on twitter with huge follower counts . But one thing I can tell you is that the follower count is not a very effective measure of influence on twitter . I can show you a lot of bots with many thousands of followers . I can also show you a lot of tweeps with less than a few thousand followers but are highly influential on twitter . To take this further , we need to try and get to understanding what is the real meaning of influence .

Influence to me means the ability to get people attention and retain it over a sustained period of time . By that , in terms of tweets , what I mean is , every one of your tweets should be read by your followers . That is the ultimate goal of influence on twitter . Now that we have defined it , how do we measure it ? Simple , if you share links , track the number of clicks on them , if you are tweeting general stuff without links , measure the number of times it is Re-tweeted . That is a simplistic way of measuring influence . Believe me , it sounds simple , but it is not all that easy to achieve . It takes a fully focused twitter strategy and a lot of toiling to get there . Ask the most influential tweeps and they will tell you that it is hard work all the way . Ok . now we have defined it . How do we improve our influence on twitter ?

Methods to improve your influence on twitter :

1. Having a regular pattern of meaningful conversations with people on twitter is the first step . When people see that you are willing to talk to them and do it regularly , the level of comfort they have with you increases and hence the possibility of them click or actioning an RT on your tweet goes up . It also enhances your brand perception on twitter greatly if you engage with people often . That is why communication is king and will always be
2. Build a circle of trust and share consistently within the circle . You need to have a group of friends who are trusted and respected on twitter . Within that circle you should have a healthy amount of mutual sharing of tweets and links amongst the circle . What this does is enhance the quality of your tweets and also improve the possibility of your reach widening exponentially when influential folks share your tweets . Like they say , when you mingle with the best , you are perceived to be the best too
3. Validate and work on your information sources . Do not try and tweet everything from everywhere , ensure that your tweets are from reliable sources and contain information that is ultimately useful or interesting to the reader . Tweet stuff that is current and catchy . Once in a while , evaluate your tweet sources and try and change them here and there for a bit of variety . After all , if everyone tweets Mashable , TechCrunch and CNN , twitter will become boring and useless
4. Use trusted URL shorteners that allow tracking . I use nxy.in and bit.ly along with ow.ly when I share links . The point here is that the URL shortener should be able to readily give you a way to analyze the response to your links in terms of clicks and shares . That helps you to plan your strategy based on the feedback you see . There are some shortening services that are suspect , steer clear of them and it will do you good
5. Have a tweet strategy . Think and plan your tweet strategy . Decide whether you wanna stick to a niche or spread around a bit . Decide the percentage of scheduled , linked and manual tweets beforehand . Plan the timing of your tweets and also ensure that your scheduled tweets do not annoy folks . There are multiple to ways to catch people’s eye . Believe me , if you do not have strategy for your tweets , it is time to make one .
6. Work on your twitter presence . Twitter like anything else is rewarding only if you put in work into it . You need to be willing to spend time and energy to get twitter going for you . Take the effort to reach out to people and build a network and you will see that influence is a cinch after that .

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