Biz Stone is one of the co-founders of Twitter. He’s now CEO of a new company called Jelly. The Washington Post ran an interview with him in yesterday’s edition, for its On Leadership series.  You should read the entire interview but here is Biz’s best Twitter tip:

Just be authentic. That’s the only way to go. Over and over and over it comes back to that. People try all kinds of different things, and when they just present themselves as human, that’s when people connect with them.

Exactly. This is why robo-tweeting, as I discussed a few weeks back, doesn’t work. This is why humble-bragging and endless self-promotion turn potential followers off. It’s rude and it’s not how you would interact in person.

When you act as you do “in real life” you develop real relationships and therefore get the “engagement” that you should be aiming for. You talk with people not at people. You help others out. You act graciously. It’s called being human, and if you are a likeable human, you may actually get people wanting to follow you on Twitter.