As I mentioned in my first post in this series, Twitter Basics: What is Twitter?, people aren’t generally interested in your answer to the question What are you doing? In that post, I listed several suggestions, but I barely scratched the surface.

Let’s say you’re planning a trip. You can use Twitter to ask for hotel or restaurant recommendations, to ask questions about the local culture, to ask about must-see attractions, or perhaps to suggest a “Tweet-up” (a live gathering of people who use Twitter).

Maybe you’re working on a project, and you’ve run into a snag. Simply post a request for help, and someone just may come to your rescue. Even if none of your followers know the answer, many people regularly search on keywords of interest, and they may find you that way.

You don’t always have to come up with your own ideas. In fact, it’s important to read and reply to other people’s tweets, especially if they have asked a question such as @alternativeoff Wondering what is your best strategy for keeping on task during work hours? If someone says something you consider very brilliant or useful, it’s appropriate to “retweet” it. This is done by typing RT and the user name (including the @) then copying and pasting the text of their tweet. Seasoned Twitter users are careful not to use the full 140 characters allowed, so people can easily retweet their posts, but in some cases, you may need to delete a couple of words to make it fit.

In other words, Twitter isn’t about throwing out random promotional messages and hoping they get noticed – it’s about conversations.

Just as conversation at a live networking event isn’t all about business, it’s okay to get personal on Twitter too. Not too personal of course, since you never know who may read your tweets, but it’s not uncommon for people to talk about sports, movies, TV shows, and so on. Just as you shouldn’t spend too much of your workday at the water cooler, you have to be careful not to spend too much time on this type of activity; however, it can be an effective way of building relationships with people, and that’s what networking is all about.

Come back tomorrow when I explain how to find people to follow. In the meantime, you can start by following me!