Posts Tagged ‘tips’

My Twitter Lessons .. No 3 (Twitter Tools)

Monday, June 8th, 2009

There are all sorts of applications to help you with Twitter (Google gives you 46m hits for Twitter Top Tools!).  They can do all sorts of things and one big tip is to do this search and read through what people recommend.  One of my issues was I had no idea what to even look for!

So here is my list of useful apps:-

  • Twitterberry: this enables me to tweet from my blackberry and given that it is meant to be instant and local this is really useful.  Imagine you find yourself in town with 30 minutes to kill, you can tweet to see if anyone is free for a coffee.  There are other apps for the iphone and smart phones.  Here is a useful list 
  • Twitpic: this allows you to upload photos from your camera phone by emailing them to twitpic, so people can see what you are looking at
  • Tweetdeck: this gives you a desktop app to help you handle your tweets, store your searches and gives you minute-by-minute updates (but beware it can be a real time waster!)
  • Tweet Later:  this does a whole load of clever tricks, including auto-following people who follow you, and auto-unfollowing too!  It can send automated messages to folks who choose to follow you and a whole lot more
  • Twitter Search
  • Other Resources:  Someone else’s top 40 list

Armed with this list you can manage your activities on Twitter both on your PC and on your phone.

You can follow me on @RichardDerwentC

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My Twitter Lessons .. No2 (Next Steps)

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

So the next step in my journey having dipped a couple more toes in the water, was to realise that if I went to the profile of someone very active in the field I was interested (in my case Change) and looked at who they were following (on the basis that they might be of interest to me too) and took a punt on following a load of them.  Many people use automated tools to help them handle twitter (more of these in another lesson), so there is a reasonable chance a fair number will automatically follow you back.  This gives you a chance to see who they are and what they offer, to engage them and share your ideas.  If you don’t like their offerings, it is just as easy to unfollow them (effectively turning off their broadcast to you.)

The next really important thing I learnt was how to use the search function.  You can search for:-

  • Things going on in your area
  • Or places you are visiting
  • Subjects that interest you
  • Specific people

You can also use something called hash tags, which is a phrase prefixed by #, and this enables you to make your content easily found by others with similar interests.  Ecademy used this feature last week for its #twalk (search for it and see!)

These three things enable you to find other people who share your interests, and this gives you an opportunity to link across cyberspace with strangers who could become friends or partners.

Happy tweeting, and remember you’ll never learn to dance if you don’t go to the ball!

You can follow me on @RichardDerwentC

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My Twitter Lessons .. No1 (Getting Started)

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

I make no claims to being an expert but hopefully my toddler steps may help some others to learn from my journey.

I’ve had a twitter account for about a year, but I frankly didn’t get it.  Why would I want to be  inundated with the minutiae of other people’s lives? And I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to hear about mine!  I spent most of last year getting to grips with the secrets of ordinary blogging and it took up most of my online time, so micro-blogging seemed just a step too far.

However, I kept hearing from people whose opinion I respect that Twitter was important… I started dipping my toe in the ‘twater’ and it was a little like going to a party where everyone else was dancing a set of steps that I didn’t know. 

I then slowly realised that Twitter was a bit like your own personal broadcasting system, enabling you to share small snippets of information and thoughts.  However, it is pointless having the world’s best broadcasting kit if no one has any radios that are tuned to your station! 

So for this system to work you have to gain followers.  How do you do that?  You start by following others (in other words, do as you would be done by!).  If you are smart you will choose people who you are interested in; they can be personalities, colleagues, friends, people who share your interests.  So the first step of this dance is you will start receiving their ‘tweets’.  If you have chosen wisely these will contain bits that interest you and that you can respond to…. now the dance has begun.  You will soon find some of these people start following you.  Now you have some ‘radios’ tuned to your station.

If you want them to keep reading you need to add some value.  You have to be one or all of the following:-

  • Interesting
  • Yourself
  • Genuine
  • Useful
  • Funny
  • Helpful
  • Provocative
  • Newsworthy

I went on an Ecademy event this week that taught us more about this and one of the ‘secrets’ was that you gain currency by what you do for others rather just broadcasting your stuff.  This builds goodwill and hopefully they will reciprocate and start recommending your content to their followers.  Simple mathematics shows that if you have 200 followers and they each have 200 followers then potentially if they all forward (Retweet) your content to their followers your tweet suddenly has an audience of 40,000!  That is a powerful way to build a reputation and make some new relationships.  There is a random quality in this process that can being a little magic into your life.

Happy tweeting!

You can follow me on @RichardDerwentC

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