Probably one of the easiest ways to network on Twitter is to answer questions asked by your followers. It is also a great way to find new people to follow as well. There is a solid list of sites that help facilitate Q&A on Twitter outside of who you are following. By reaching outside your network, you are exposing yourself to a new audience and in turn increase your chances of getting more like-minded followers.

Now I still prefer the old fashioned method of finding questions on Twitter by just using the standard Twitter Search. All you need to do is include a question mark and your topic. I also include an operator that removes all links as I find they are usually just titles of blog posts and not real questions.

There is also a growing list of sites you can use that might make finding and answering questions a bit easier. I sometimes find these sites to be a bit limited in what they offer simply because they restrict their Twitter Search API calls to phrases like “Does anyone know” and “why does” rather than scanning for all legitimate questions. However, I will leave judgements about quality up to you.

I hope I have successfully overwhelmed you with Twitter Q&A sites. Each site works a little differently, whether it is just the look and feel or the functionality altogether. I’m not convinced yet that Twitter could replace Yahoo Answer or LinkedIn Answers, but Twitter seems to be in a league of it’s own, delivering unparalleled real time results. This especially holds true when asking questions via Twitter at an event.

Nevertheless, continue to provide value to your community and watch your relationships grow stronger in time.

- Post header photo by Jilligan86