Nowhere else can you get thousands of responses instantly. Polls on websites were a step in the right direction, but even then the participation level was low and slow. When you first join Twitter, don’t expect everyone to answer your questions right away. Your question should be phrased to provoke conversation or re-tweeting(forwarded on). A question asked by an influential person on Twitter however, will be much more likely to get a response. Companies such as Gregg Fraley’s setup creates an easy entrance into the world of Twitter research without having to do it yourself.

If you want to experiment yourself, it is very easy to add or remove a person in Twitter, users will follow others with like-minded conversations.

Starter Twitter Tips:

A good idea to name your account based on the topic you will focus on. Just like a website, the name of it will be the first impression that people receive.

Write your Twitter profile according to what you want to do with the account. Your first few words are the most important because it will determine whether they continue reading or not.

Another way for the right people to follow you on Twitter is creating a descriptive background. Design an appropriately attractive background with information such as your Logo, URL and critical keywords. Based on web eye-movement tests, the upper left side of the screen is what people look at first, so design the background with all the information on the left. A good example of using the background for informational purposes would be my Twitter page. Clarity and simplicity is important here so the message you are trying to convey isn’t distracted by complicated textures or graphics.

You can also leverage existing questions and answers through Twitter search engines. There’s the default one from Twitter, and also multiple live searches such as Monitter. You can get insightful information from the search results, or even take it further by directly contacting the people who wrote the original messages. And once you are connected to the right person, people of similar interest will gravitate to your tweets and follow you as well.

Twitter is an extremely timely and broad-reaching research tool. The interactions and the insights are invaluable to any industry. And with the right strategies, you will always be a step ahead of the competition. What do You use Twitter for?