Stop tweeting, and listen!

Social Media Today blog just posted about the top 20 Twitter monitoring tools about, and it reminded me of some advice I recently gave a friend trying to jump start his company’s following on Twitter.

Social Media Today made some fabulous points as well about why Twitter is PERFECT for listening, not just talking…

1. Twitter has real-time results. We’ve all heard examples of how breaking news spreads immediately on Twitter. Because of Twitter’s real-time search engine, you can get a quick pulse of public opinion. Even when you tweet, if someones not looking at their feed, it’s there for a second and gone – and the trends and conversation are constantly changing.

2. Wide reach. Twitter is useful to many different types and sizes of businesses. The amount of different types of companies and professionals on twitter are endless…

3. Direct feedback. You hear what people are saying as they say it.

There are many powerful social media tracking and analytic tools available which help you monitor your Twitter feed. Why do you think there are so many applications to help you follow and track Twitter? Because it’s important to listen! If you are having trouble with following on twitter. Keep in mind it might be because you’re only talking. If you just ramping up your company’s twitter account. I can’t stress it enough… Keep talking, but make sure you listen.

Set a goal:

1. Tweet 3 times a day
2. Reply 3 times a day

The key is to make sure you are replying just as much as you are pushing out useful information, this well help you to first, join the conversation and second, prove you are listening, not just gabbing!

And while we’re talking tweets, here’s some twitter humor for you….