I am active on Twitter, and am happy to help entrepreneurs who reach out to me. It's not that I am altruistic - it's just that I think it's fun helping out youngsters ! However, I do wish they would learn how to ask for help - this would help me to help them more effectively.

Because I am flooded with requests, I have to choose which ones I respond to. It's much easier for me to ignore most of these requests - after all, I am under no obligation to reply, and need to use my time sensibly. Nevertheless, I do try to be as helpful as I can, and find it very frustrating when I get poorly crafted requests for assistance.

Many of these are written by people who are too lazy to take the time and trouble to customise their messages. They send the same generic canned request to hundreds of people - and then take offense if I do not reply ! Why should I respond to spam ?

Even worse, many of them mis-spell my name. Guys, come on - if you can't even be bothered to check the spelling of my name, why do you think I will bother to reply ?

Many of these questions are very generic - and if it's obvious that they could have found the answering by doing a 2 minute Google search, I am not going to waste my time engaging with them.

So much for my pet peeves, which I am sure lots of other busy people share as well. 

Now that I have told you what not to do, what can you do to get my attention ?

I am happy to help those who help themselves, so please show me what homework and research you have done. What's your specific problem ? What have you tried so far ? Where have you got stuck ? Why do you think I will be able to help ? The more specific your query; the higher your chances of being able to pique my interest. I am more than happy to engage with you, if I think we can both learn from each other !