Recently I’ve had a number of people ask me what the "secret" is to being successful on Twitter.

Of course, success means different things to different people, but for the most part they were referring to building a solid foundation of followers (a network) and a rapport with those people. Getting retweeted, having people reply, etc – conversations.  

My answer: take the 90-Day Challenge and…

…give it a good honest shot. Commit to Twitter (actually this can be applied to Facebook as well) for at least 90 days and do the following:

1. Tweet every day at least a few times, more if you’d like.
2. Talk about what you are passionate about.
3. Find more people to follow in various aspects of your life; business, hobbies, sports, passions. We all have them.
4. Create at least 2 Twitter lists e.g. business related, hobby related.
5. Retweet people who’s tweets you enjoy.
6. Say something funny – poke fun at someone else, have fun!  
7. @reply at least once a day with either a comment or question.
8. Post a few pictures to Twitter using Twitpic or Hootsuite (or other).
9. Use a few hashtags e.g. #YYJ or those related to your business.
10. Try to get to know some of the Twitter folk you are meeting offline by attending an event e.g. a tweet-up, a meet-up, Social Media Club or other.
11. Adhere to the 10:1 tweet ratio, 10 value-added tweets for every 1 marketing tweet.
12. Here are a few other Tips to Tweeting Your Business.

At the end of the 90 days you will have a solid network, some new Twitter friends and a few business prospects, if not clients.