I have been following David Armano since I saw him speak at Social Media Club Chicago in January 2009. I found his tweets interesting but I never took the time to respond to anything he said until I saw a tweet from him indicating that he was using Yammer. I responded back to him, and said that although I like Yammer, it was difficult to implement at my work because people just don’t yam.

My tweet was different from the other responses he received that evening and he took the time to look into my social accounts (blog, twitter etc). And, it just so happened that he was looking for a Community Manager at Edelman and I fit the bill. A few DM’s and an interview later, I accepted a position. Behold the power of the @ reply without which I wouldn’t be in my current position.

We all know that twitter is a wonderful tool for connecting with people but are you truly harnessing the power of your account, do you actively engage or is your approach more passive? On a daily basis I respond to and ask questions of my followers in order to build a real relationship with them. The people are out there, you’ve accepted their follows and now it’s time to engage with them so you can maintain the relationship and take it to another level.

Here are 3 of my tips for how to utilize the @ reply properly.

Find your @ reply limit

You have to try to find a happy medium with twitter replies. If you reply too much your feed will look like you just respond to every tweet in your stream, which says you aren’t creating your own original content to contribute to the conversation. If you never respond you look like a person that really doesn’t engage and interact with their followers. If you find a way to respond frequently to valuable conversation you’ll utilize twitter much more effectively and you’ll find that your tweets will provide more value to your entire following.

Acknowledge people that reach out to you

There is nothing worse than reaching out to a company or person only to be ignored. Take the time to look through your mentions and replies and try to respond back to as many as you can. It’s one thing to message @billgates and not hear anything back but a company or smaller personal account should attempt to acknowledge when someone reaches out.

Know when to take a conversation “offline”

In certain instances a twitter conversation can go back and forth between two people for a while. In this situation it’s usually not something your followers care to read about and it can come off more like an IM conversation than a twitter conversation. If possible move the conversation to DM or email so you can have a more in depth discussion without harming your twitter following.

Responding is engaging and engaging with real live people is becoming a huge movement on the web. How can businesses and individuals harness the power of engagement with the people who matter to them?

Image credit: ~llse