Twitter – WTF?

Everywhere I go, people want to know…what is the big deal with Twitter? I could point you to Jon Stewart’s piece on Twitter, but that may confuse you even more. The simple answer is Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Brain Farts? Sometimes. Meaningless details about what Bikini Demi Moore is wearing at the beach? Sometimes. Web 2.0 rebels who challenge you to “Follow?” Yes. The fastest growing source of information immediately available? Yes. A great way to contribute knowledge and share information? Yes. A space to listen to what people are talking about, especially concerning your brand? Yes!

Twitter is still being defined. The simple answer, micro-blogging, does not explain how Twitter can be used effectively by you. The first step is to register for an account. Even if you have no interest in Twitter, you do have an interest in protecting your brand. If you do nothing else, register your name. You can take this advice and apply it to every social media website. The second step is to fill in your profile and upload a picture of yourself. This will take you 3 minutes as Twitter does not give you a lot of options. Next do a search and see if you have any friends on Twitter to start following. In my case, I had 2 friends. I do a search every month and have been slowly finding more friends.

Now you have a Twitter account and 2 friends, what’s next? Add your Twitter address to your other social media networks (FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, etc.), and to the Signature in your email. If you have a website, post a link to your Twitter account on it. If you have a Blog, consider adding a Twitter widget so your posts show up on the sidebar of your Blog (look at the right side of my Blog for an example of this). Producing new print material, include your Twitter address like you do your web site address. Why? Because Twitter must be integrated into your world.To make social media marketing effective, you must blend in elements of traditional marketing.

Some people use Twitter to update their status in FaceBook, I post differently on both networks and choose to keep them separate. For you, this may reduce the maintenance of your social networks and you may find it very useful. What should you post? I suggest finding a balance between your work, your life and your passion. It is essential that you find your voice and deliver content you care about. As you start tweeting, you may find that people are more interested in your tweets related to your passions than your work. This does not reduce the value of Twitter, in contrast, it increases the effectiveness of Twitter. Relationship building takes time. You must engage in conversation and meet people on very real levels. Take your Tweetversations (new word, sorry) to the real world and meet people, be it by phone, IM or for coffee.

Last but not least, download some software to help you manage Twitter. There are so many programs to choose from. I have 10 programs on my iPhone and have been using Twitterific the most. On the desktop I keep Tweetdeck open all of the time on my desktop. Following the lead of Robert Scoble, I open up a column in TweetDeck that is a search on my user name. This lets me monitor posts related to me. I also keep a few groups with people saved in different groups. This allows me to follow 2,000 people and manage the posts semi-effectively. Do I miss a lot of posts? Yes. Do I find engaging posts every day? Yes. If you are not seeing interesting information, you need to find more interesting people to follow. Why use TweetDeck? It makes it very easy to Retweet and add links (shortened), Tweets are also short enough that it is useful to view them in columns. Information management is an art form, experiment and find a different program that you like better.

Top 10 Hints for Tweeting

1. Tweet regularly and keep your tweets genuine.
2. Contribute knowledge and links to the community.
3. Follow anyone that follows you. Think Free Love and the Social Web.
4. Cite people you follow when you post related to them. Credit is free, be generous with it.
5. ReTweeting is an honor, if you like something, others in your network may appreciate the information as well.
6. Be Transparent when you pitch your business, we will respect you more and navigate to your links.
7. Pitch your business, we know you are working and are interested in what you do.
8. Be an expert, share what you know about, chances are there are other people who want to know what you know.
9. Integrate your tweets into your other social media. Think Blog, FaceBook Application etc.
10. Take Twitter offline to the real world, making and developing relationships keeps the world small.

Follow Jamie at http://twitter.com/sonicallstar

As an update, I am an increasingly big fan of Seesmic’s Twitter client (FaceBook support coming any day now). This Adobe Air app is easy to install and use, allows me to view and post from multiple accounts and lets me keep open multiple columns (friends, search column, etc.).

One technique to get past the 2000 follower mark

Following a link from@walkinginclouds, I watched a video by @davedube and decided to unfollow almost everyone that hasn’t followed me. This is almost against my philosophy, but I can not follow more than 2001 people until I have 2,000 people following me. I used Twitter Karma to unfollow a few hundred people and follow anyone I wasn’t following that was following me. The process was simple – enter my Twitter info and click WHACK. I could then select a list of who was following me and who was not following me, choose select all and then bulk follow or unfollow them. Net gain to me is I can now follow 300 new people. Cleaning house is important and will enable you to build more 2-way relationships. It will also get me access to new information and build a stronger foundation within my account. Good Luck!