5 Ways To Use Twitter As An Active Authority

Twitter is not just a broadcast tool or a conversation tool. Used well, it’s an authority tool.

Here are 5 ways to use Twitter as an active authority in your field:

1. Curate, don’t just create. Share the best thinking in your field – from others as well as yourself. Curation signals that you know what’s worth knowing. It builds trust faster than self-promotion.
2. Have opinions. Not provocative for its own sake. But genuine points of view. People follow authorities because they see things differently. If you’re just agreeing with everyone, you’re not an authority.
3. Be consistently useful. The question to ask before every tweet: does this add something? Useful content compounds. Every useful tweet makes the next one more likely to be seen.
4. Engage with the right conversations. Find the conversations in your field and add to them. Not just your own threads – other people’s too. Generosity of engagement builds authority faster than volume of posts.
5. Be findable. Use the language your audience uses. Engage with the hashtags and accounts your audience follows. Being an authority nobody can find is not very useful.