Wayne Sutton (@waynesutton) certainly thinks so. Recently Wayne sent a message to his followers on Twitter asking them to participate in a poll about his tweets:

The poll, available here, says “Twitter is about conversations, collaboration, sharing & community. To make sure I’m adding valuable content to your twitter stream, please take [my] poll.”

The options in Wayne’s poll ranged from social media and online community building to iPhone news and African-American issues. Personally, I voted for social media, online community building, microblogging in the enterprise, as those are the topics I’m most interested in, but I also threw in a “just tweet what you want,” as I feel Wayne ought not let the masses dictate everything he can talk about.

At the closing of the poll, Wayne’s top three topics were:

• more tweets on social media (13%)
• just tweet whatever you want (13%)
• more tweets on online community building (12%)

Should You Poll Your Audience?

For Individuals

Its your call. If you’ve got thousands upon thousands of followers and are concerned with maintaining that following, you have a vested interest in knowing their opinions. After all, most people are probably following you to hear about more than what you had for lunch. If you’re a casual microblogger and are just in it for fun, I wouldn’t bother.

For Businesses

You should definitely be engaging your followers for feedback. While individuals can build followings fairly quickly based on personal, emotional and/or psychological connections, businesses are much more tricky. If the only thing you’re posting is a twitterfeed from your blog, you won’t see many latching on to your account. If you are always microblogging with a bullhorn, you’ll most certainly turn people off. The key is to find the perfect blend of promotion and conversation, and that’s where your followers come in.

Examine What Your Competitors are Doing

Before you even begin microblogging, take a look at what competitors in your space are doing. Try reaching out with a poll, like Wayne did, and gauge what your customers or prospects are interested in hearing about. If you can’t come up with the options or topics (you may be in even bigger trouble), crowdsource them. Gather suggestions from your audience and then run them all in a poll where users can vote.

If you take the time to engage your followers and involve them in your conversations, they’ll feel more willing to participate and you’ll be much more successful in your efforts.

I’ve been following the @cnnbrk Twitter account since my first days on the service. I saw it as a unique way to get the latest breaking headlines as part of my daily stream. It kept me from having to actually click out to CNN every day to see what was going on. This way, if something is really urgent, I’ll see it come across Twitter and can then click out to read the full story.

Generally tweets from this account are fairly sparse (2-3 per day at most) and only hit on the really big stuff.

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