How do you Tweet asked the bird to the beast?
When I use the social networking site Twitter, and when I counsel my clients to use sites like Twitter, I seek balance in the type of a variety of the items that I post on all of my social networking sites. I’m posting this as, “How do you use Twitter” is a frequent question from my clients.
I don’t calculate how often I take each action listed below, but I do know that they are the type of things that cause me to follow, friend or link to others as well. I also know that I tweet more often about others than about myself:
- Things that show who I am; personal tweets, often in reaction to something someone else has tweeted
- Messages that connect me with others, asking questions, answering questions, learning about who people are and what is important to them
- Helping people solve small problems – PR, social media, tech, life, & generally being supportive
- Links to interesting, amusing, useful info, tips, tools, ideas, resources etc.
- Passing along interesting links from others in my twitter stream
- Linking to other’s blog posts etc.
- Links to my own work, blog posts, articles, press releases
- Linking to or retweeting client info, posts, cool tweets. I believe in transparency; I always note when a tweet includes client info, although it can sometimes we a challenge to fit into 140 characters or less. (I always say if it is from a client, but I usually have cool clients with interesting projects, so it’s not usually problematic or Spammy – Tell me if I’m wrong. I won’t link to a client’s item, if it won’t be useful/interesting for others in my audience ).
How do you tweet?
- Have I missed an important/useful type of tweeting?
- Which of these do you do the most? honestly.
- I probably retweet others links the most. But I try and tweet those that haven’t been retweeted a hundred times already.
- Which of the above annoys you most? Or should this post have been how not to use twitter or what not to tweet?
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Jeff Korhan 01.26.09 at 10:27 pm
For me Twitter has been a great source of referrals, a nice tool for research, and means of learning more about the movers and shakers of social media – and their reputations. Those are my 3 R’s of Using Twitter – Referrals, Research and Reputation. And it has been a phenomenal resource for me in all three categories.
My suggestion with using Twitter is to walk softly at first because the culture is important, and that culture seems to change every couple of months. That said, I tend to communicate what’s on my mind and trust that it will land in the right place. Retweeting seems to be on the rise, so I’m doing more of that. My suggestion to anyone getting started now would be follow the crowd, learn the culture, and THEN be yourself.
I believe you have effectively covered that!
Jeff Korhan
CathyLarkin 01.26.09 at 11:51 pm
Jeff, thanks for the comment.
I like your: “Those are my 3 R’s of Using Twitter – Referrals, Research and Reputation. ”
And I love your summing up quote: “My suggestion to anyone getting started now would be follow the crowd, learn the culture, and THEN be yourself.”
Danny Brown 01.27.09 at 12:00 am
I think you pretty much covered all the points in a blog post nutshell, Cathy.
One thing I might suggest (or *disagree* with) is the mention that you “learn the culture” before being yourself. If only from it being a slightly counteractive measure.
If you can’t be yourself until you know the culture, isn’t that making you something that’s conditioned? Being yourself is exactly that – some of it may work, some of it won’t. Either way, you’ll attract the *audience* that your own self would normally attract offline.
Just a thought?
CathyLarkin 01.27.09 at 12:16 am
Good point Danny, I do appreciate the shift in emphasis. I was quoting Jeff, and still like the gist of what he said. I think that we all adapt ourselves to some degree to fit various situations. I am the same person at the core, but interact with others a bit differently if I am at a formal networking meeting, or if I am at an informal party where some networking is occurring. However, authenticity is something that is valued in this community, so being yourself – is important.
It would be hard to deny that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all equally accepting of the same behavior. So my advice is still to be yourself, but tread lightly a the beginning, at least until you find your niche, or get the rhythm or feel for how the site works.
Although of the three sites, Twitter is in some ways the most forgiving, because following and unfollowing is so easy, that for every person you loose due to a specific message or tone in your message, or what have you, you may gain one or more other person who chooses to follow you because of that thing that upset someone else.
But I have seen some folks get a slow start because they used Twitter as a bullhorn, and a mechanism for almost exclusively tweeting out their own material. It took them weeks to get more than 30 followers. If they had listened bit more, and followed a more balanced approach that many others follow, they might have been more successful faster.
Jyl Johnson Pattee 01.29.09 at 12:11 am
I love all of these comments. The interesting thing I have found as co-founder of the weekly #gno parties is that as my time and experience on twitter increases, my reasons and my needs for being there change. For example, I came to twitter to have fun—pure and simple. Chat, meet folks, tweet. I’m an extrovert. I love meeting new people. And, I instantly loved twitter.
Now that we have formed Mom It Forward and our community from #gno largely is a twitter group, I find myself needing to promote activities and events through this medium, because that’s where the gals are. I also find myself needing to connect/re-connect/stay connected with at a greater pace with people in the #gno community, because one of our goals is to be as inclusive/genuine as possible.
That said, the difficult thing for me is striking that balance between connecting enough (staying true to what I came to twitter for in the first place), promoting (through RTs) others, and getting the word out about the our community’s events. While we have gone to other mediums to offset some of this, we still find there is nothing like a DM to get the attention of our twitter followers.
Great post! Love the three Rs. Any other suggestions for striking a better balance would be so appreciated.