Here’s the scene: You’ve been on Twitter a while, you’ve had fun tweeting about what you are doing, you’ve been retweeting the power users, but now you are ready to up your game.
You are ready to start providing valuable links and content to your followers. You are ready to start being a contributor to the great information that is passed through the twitterverse every single day. You want to establish yourself as a leader and someone that people look to for their daily supply of knowledge.
How do you start that? How do you find relevant, fresh, fun and useful information to tweet? Where do you begin such an endeavor? People are on Twitter looking for that kind of content and with a little bit of effort, you can be a person that provides it. Once you start getting a lot of RTs and you start monitoring which links your followers like, you will develop an “eye for spotting good content.” You will start to know almost instantly which links will be the best ones to share.
I am very grateful and humbled to have been retweeted over 51,000 times, but learning to find valuable content wasn’t always easy for me. I watched and learned from a few of my Twitter friends that are known for finding this type of information. I thought today I would share with you what I’ve learned from them.
@Flipbooks
Blair has received over 341,000 retweets [Source: http://www.dailyrt.com] He is a very special friend of mine on Twitter and I’ve had a lot of fun watching his success in this area. This very helpful post, which chronicles his retweet journey, taught me a lot about finding content. I think anyone who wants to learn this skill should read this: How @Flipbooks Hit 300,000+ RTs/Ultimate Guide to Getting #ReTweeted on Twitter by @FlipbooksWhen I asked him today what his one piece of advice would be, he said, “Open every link and check the most popular and commented on articles. Also check the list of related articles.” If things progress as they are now for Blair, in about 20 days or so, he will pass the New York Times and become the #3 news source on Twitter! Congratulations Blair!
With over 117,000 Twitter followers and over 70,000 RTs; Aaron is no stranger to Twitter success. He is a wonderful soul and makes Twitter fun for me. What I have learned from Aaron is how to use Twitter lists to find great content. I didn’t use Twitter lists to their full advantage until Aaron took the time to teach me this. When someone you know and respect on Twitter has created a list of people that tweet great content, it is a good idea to follow that list.You don’t have to follow each individual person, just the list. Then, on the web version of Twitter, just click on that list at any time to have a full filtered screen of tweets to retweet that have great content. It is a simple and brilliant way to find great content to tweet. Aaron, known for his big heart, says the best part of this process isn’t finding the great content, but the sharing through RTs.
If you follow Brian on Twitter, you know he needs know explanation. This dude kicks out killer links all day long without skipping a beat. If I weren’t such close friends with him, I’d think he had ten people in his office tweeting all day for him. But he doesn’t, it’s just him, and he is damn good at what he does, as shown by the over 76,000 times he’s been retweeted.What I’ve learned from Brian is how to effectively build and use an RSS feed reader to find good content. I, like Brian, use Google Reader and I was a newbie at this until I learned from him. He writes a lot of great posts, but this one is in my bookmarks and I still refer to it today. If you would like to utilize this method for finding content, which I highly recommend, learn from this: How To Become A Link-Spewing Maniac and Still Have A Life (Like Me!) Thank you Brian for teaching me that with the proper tools, nothing is impossible!
Since I am Richard’s assistant at Bit Rebels, I work with him almost all day every day. I get an inside view of how he thinks and how he has achieved over 154,000 RTs and gotten on 2,466 Twitter lists. He also has a reputation for being a content master on Twitter. What I have learned from Richard is that if you want to RT great content that is fresh, fun and new… create it yourself! Almost everyone has a blog and sometimes I think we overlook the obvious.Once you really take the time to get to know your followers and know what they like, you will know what information might be helpful to them. This is especially true if you are in a specific niche. I asked Richard today what his tip would be to help people find the kind of content that is useful and he said, “Just follow what you like and search Google for it. Find the blogs and sites that write about your favorite topics.“
Chris is a very special Twitter friend of mine. Like his bio says, he’s an introvert, and he has taught me that you don’t have to be an overly outgoing person and you don’t have to talk to everyone in order to gain a reputation for sharing great content on Twitter.More importantly than his almost 45,000 RTs is the fact that he is listed 1,900 times which is a testament to his content. When I asked him to give our readers one tip for finding great content, he said, “If you want to find some quality friends, you have to wade through all the dicks first says Cartman (South Park). Twitter lists are the way to do that!“
One common thread in all this is that finding quality content to tweet or retweet is not that difficult. We live in an information age and it is everywhere we look. It really just comes down to filtering out all the junk to find the good stuff. Before I close this article, I have two more resources for you.
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