Jenise Fryatt Bio

Whether you are considering Twitter as a platform for promoting your event, your business or to meet peers it's important to have a strategy that will help you gain influence.

But how do you do it? One quick and easy formula that will help you build the kind of Twitter influence you want is to: ENGAGE, INFORM and RETWEET.

ENGAGE

There is a vibrant community of event professionals on Twitter.  They can be identified by the use of several hashtags. (A hashtag is the # sign followed by a word or series of letters and/or numbers.) Examples of some of these hashtags are:  #eventprofs #engage365 and #mpi.

Use Twitter search to conduct searches under these hashtags and any other key words that your potential clients or colleagues might be using.  Follow people who are interesting and look like they are engaging on Twitter.  People who are only promoting themselves or posting one-way are much less likely to help you build your community. And having a community that you support and that supports you will help you build influence.

Talk to people. If you're shy, remember; people are on Twitter to connect. It's not fun to spend your time and energy posting things that never get responses. If they post a link that you enjoyed, reply to them, thank them and tell them why you enjoyed it. If they make a comment you find funny, reply and tell them. If they post a picture you liked, reply and tell them why.

If you have a question about an upcoming industry conference that you are attending, or about room decor for your next event, try tweeting that question using the #eventprofs hashtag.  The community is friendly and you might get some valuable tips!

You can also just post a comment yourself about what you are doing or what you thinking, but please try to make it interesting. Nobody wants to know that you're rushing off to take little Johnny to soccer practice. But if you just got back from the U2 concert and Bono crowd surfed right over you, by all means tweet! Inquiring minds want to know!

INFORM

Twitterers tend to be information junkies. We can't get enough! So, if you want people to take notice of you on Twitter, there's no better way than to tweet links to information that is useful to them. It's very likely that anything you find useful, your followers will find useful too.

But if you want to be more specific about the type of followers you attract, make sure you are tweeting information that's useful to them. If you are interested in connecting with event industry folks, tweet about that. Or if you are looking to attract members of the corporate world, tweet links to blog posts about that. 

I subscribe to the RSS feeds of events industry related blogs, and follow Twitter searches and Google news alerts on events industry keywords, so that I can find the most up to date information that my followers (and I) will find useful. I tweet on average, 10 and 20 links (on events news, social media, self improvement and things I just find interesting) per day.

RETWEET

This might be the easiest yet the most important thing you can do on Twitter. One click, and you've forwarded useful information to your followers while at the same time supporting and publicizing a fellow tweeter. Remember when you retweet, you are saying that you think what this person tweeted has value, thus implying that the person himself may be good to follow.

Retweeting allows you to promote someone AND inform in one click! So don't be stingy. If you see ANYTHING that you think your followers would appreciate, retweet it. The good turn you do someone today, will likely come back to you tomorrow.

A couple of final notes. Because social cues are so limited, it's important to be especially courteous on Twitter. Always thank people when they retweet, mention or recommend that others follow you. Also, be very careful about promoting yourself. The soft sell approach is best. We don't want to think that the only reason you are interacting with us is to sell us something.

And finally, be yourself - but be the open, genuine, curious, accepting version of yourself. If you are, you are bound to make many friends, learn a lot and experience the success you seek.

What experiences have YOU had on Twitter?