Its always great when a topic that you have been thinking about for a while suddenly gets distilled by someone else in the blogosphere. This happened just this morning with regard to the question of how I manage my time engaging with others on Twitter, blogs and forums – in fact, in all types of social networking.
Angela Maiers writes (in a link that a friend shared on Twitter):
As a critical reader and writer, Twitter or otherwise, you must be purposeful in how you engage. You get what you put in, and I am not talking about the number of “Tweets” – I am talking about engagement in the conversations.
My Twitter Engagement Formula is my guideline for entering the Twittersphere with purpose and intention. It’s what I call my 70-20-10.
Share Resources (70) – Successful learning in the 21st Century is not what you know, but what you can share, so 70 % of my Twittertime is spent sharing others voices, opinions, and tools.
Collaborations (20) – 20% of my Tweets are directly responding, connecting, collaboration, and co-creating with like-minded Twitter colleagues. From these important tweets, lifelong professional and personal relationships have been forged.
Chit-Chat (10) 10% of my Twittertalk is “chit-chat-how’s-your-hat” stuff. It is in these “trivial” details shared about working out, favorite movies, politics, and life in general that I connect with others as a human being. These simple chit chats are what have allowed me to know that I am never alone, and there is support whenever, wherever, and however I need it!
Your Twitter Engagement Formula will, of course, be different, but I encourage you to create one. Engage with purpose and intention, and Twitter success will follow!
I like this idea of setting an ideal split of sharing/collaboration/chat and then measuring one’s output against that, and actually I think that 70/20/10 is a good starting point. I’d say my stats are probably more like 40/40/20 at the moment, so I have some work to do.
I can also see this being very relevant to Lotus Connections deployments, particularly when advising new users that have been involved in social networking applications previously.
What would your ideal engagement formula be? And how are you doing against that right now?