It wasn’t to long ago that I stumbled across Twitter, actually that is somewhat of a lie as in fact I had tried it about a year ago and couldn’t see the real fuss or hype that it was generating. However shortly after I redesigned this website and my other side project Hotstickybun I was quick to realize that almost all online portfolio’s and freelancers have some reference to Twitter on their homepages. It was at that time I figured I better give Twitter another “twhirl“.
At first glimpse it seemed eerily familiar to Facebook’s status updates and having some serious gripes with some things people plugged through my news feed on that social network I had my doubts again as to what exactly the point of Twitter was, I mean did I really need to hear about people’s obsessions with flu shots or what there plans were for the weekend 600 Kilometers away? At first thought no but after spending an excessive amount of time with Twitter I finally get the point as to what the Hype is all about.
In tech terms, it’s really nothing more then a stream of mini blog posts (and if you still think blogging is a waste of time you need to get connected). If that still doesn’t make much sense to you then I’ll put it simply as your own personalized news feed of the things you’re interested in. Sports, celebrities, tech news, real estate, movies, etc…
If you belong to Facebook, it’s similar to the home screen there (aka, the “news feed”)– which features a list of your friends’ recent activities. The main difference between the two services is that while all your friends’ activities appear in your news feed, only people you choose to follow appear in your Twitter feed.
Don’t judge it by the continuously-updated public timeline of often pointless blather. The value is in your own micro-community of followers and who you choose to follow.
You don’t want the wisdom of any crowd; you want the wisdom of a carefully-selected crowd.
At the time of this current blog I continue to use Twitter diligently but that’s not to say I don’t understand the power of it.
After I first registered an account I immediatly considered quitting because I wasn’t following anyone and no one was following me. I bit the bullet and I ended up following things of interest, most notably my activities surrounding my hobbies. Queue the following of my favorite hockey teams in the Edmonton Oilers and Chicago Blackhawks.
I soon started tweeting a bit and began to socialize with a few people. After a while I soon realized how powerful twitter can really be and what kind of benefits it brings. It’s already been proven that twitter can be used as a self-promotion tool to pitch your content or services and products. It’s this mixture of blogging, RSS and social networking that makes twitter so appealing.
Simple yes but also incredibly powerful.
There are so many reasons why one should Twitter and I could probably spend hours writing them but here are a few more notable ones.
Learn Stuff: I’ve been building websites for years but still always feel like I need to know more. Thankfully I have followed numerous tutorial sites in the business and am updated daily on tips and tricks with programs like Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, Web Development, and more. No matter what your industry there are always bloggers sharing there stories and advice on the web.
Widen Your Network: As a blogger and web designer human connection both for personal enjoyment and professional growth is of the up most importance. Following people in your field of business whether it be for advice or just networking is always a benefit.
Showcase Your Goods: Your name, your ideas and your brand are out there by word of mouth or a personal website. Just like any other social network, twitter can be used as a powerful tool to build your brand and raise awareness. If you browse a bit through twitter you’ll undoubtedly find twitter users for a lot of popular online and offline brands, that simply track their day to day progress and update with valuable breaking news. The thing about twitter branding is that it’s a lot more personal, probably thanks to it’s IM like environment, helping you to thin the line between you and your readers.
It’s Simple To Use: Twitter has one way to get content into the system. You see a box. You type. You push a button that says “update.”
Fast help and feedback: In my field I often am searching for help with PHP or general programming errors. It often resorts to using Google or posting on a message board and waiting hours hoping someone posts a response. Posting a problem on Twitter often leads to great results as in most cast help arrives in a matter of minutes. Where else can you find this kind of fast response? I soon found that twitter can be an extremely efficient environment for collecting honest and live feedback, ranging from anything like design, to writing, to the over all reader experience.
Marketing: I often urge most my web design clients to sign up for Twitter and I often get the same response “Is it really necessary?” I usually tell them as is the case with most social media services you can use twitter to market and pitch your products. Twitter won’t help you directly market your content but by helping build your brand name and authority. Once you establish yourself as a Tweeter and respected authority to your audience sales will undoubtedly follow.
It’s viral: Anything that spreads quickly and easily across a community makes a great social service anytime. Twitter works virally in a word of mouth kinda way. You as a user may tweet about something important but your followers may take that same tweet and spread it virally through all of there followers and so forth and so on.
Be Original: No one wants to hear about your hours in the bathroom (well maybe some people do) but you need to give twitter users enough reason to follow you and of course to keep on following. It’s simple to achieve this, be yourself. Being useful, original, funny, or finding something interesting on the web might captivate your followers so don’t hesitate to twitter it. If you’ve got an interesting idea or topic for conversation, share it with your followers and thus actually add some value to your tweets. If you’ve got a more humorous and sociable personality, then don’t keep it all in, let it shine on twitter as well; people always like to be around funny people.
Dont Over Tweet: Arguably the most important, I’ve followed multiple people as they began following me and immediately put a stop to them because I was getting flooded with tweets every two minutes. I know I’m not alone in thinking that this is highly annoying. What you have to keep in mind here is not to exaggerate with your tweets and keep your personal ramblings to a minimum, unless they’re interesting of course.
Don’t Under Tweet: Over-twitting is bad, but how about under-twitting? While it probably won’t lead to loss of followers, under-twitting will undoubtedly hurt your profile’s growth. Like in any other community, you have to be active to reap it’s rewards, this means twitting at least a few times a day. A lot of people’ve been telling me they can’t keep up with twitter because they simply forget to update. You can solve this little impediment fairly simple by setting your “notices” (can be found in the settings tab). There you’ll find a neat option that will cause twitter to send a “nudge” whenever you fail to update your status during 24 hours.
Don’t Over Publicize: As a blogger your sole interest in twitter may be just to promote your own content and blog brand. While there is nothing wrong with this don’t go overboard, most followers will undoubtedly become annoyed with your shameless self promotion. Like mention before: be useful, unique and contributive.
So called experts feel Twitter will go under but are they the same ones who said the same thing about Facebook being just another fad? The Twitter service has been almost doubling it’s users and tweets daily for the past couple months. With the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Oprah promoting Twitter it’s hard to believe that Twitter will die. In the past 5 months Twitter has utterly exploded into the mainstream media and will only continue to grow. I won’t hide the fact that I am a Twitter fan and I urge anyone to at least check it out and get involved in the community and I hope by reading this I may have just convinced some of you to do so.
As always you can follow me on my Twitter at http://twitter.com/walkities
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