As with all these tools the best way to find out if Twitter is for you is to give it a try. At the time of this writing Twitter seems ubiquitous in the mainstream media and it is likely that you found this article because you are trying to respond to all your friends demanding that you get an account. But Twitter currently has about 8 million accounts which means that only 0.001% of the world population tweet. It is still very early on the growth curve so anyone joining now can still consider themselves an early adopter.
Plenty of beginner guides to using Twitter out there. I started using Twitter about a month ago so plenty still to learn about using the tool but here are my five tips to-date for using Twitter:
- Lifecasting and/or mindcasting: Lifecasting is summed up brilliantly in the Supernews animation "Twouble with Twitters" where a woman drifts by the screen and shares in a frail voice: "Found a parking spot". But mindcasters often take themselves and their ideas far too seriously and can be the equivilant of watching BBC4 in primetime - lots of people say they do it but hardly anyone actually does. Recommendation is to find a balance between the two approaches to tweeting.
- Broadcast and/or conversation: You can't decide to lifecast and/or mindcast without also sorting out an approach to interaction on Twitter. Fundamentally it is a social tool so just using it to syndicate RSS from your blog or exclusively as a "micro-blogging" tool doesn't take advantage of the platform. But equally most of your followers are excluded from the utility of your feed when all you do is @ replies, turning a broadcast medium into a one-to-one conversation with lots of people over-hearing. Recommendation is again to find a balance between the two approaches.
- Multiple accounts: It is fast and easy to start new accounts on Twitter and this can also really help to sort out your messages and audiences. Watch this video interview with PR-exec turned Peggy Olson Twitter superstar Carrie Bugbee to understand how this can really help. Personally I started Blogscholar to tweet about academic issues, Cutlines to tweet about media issues and ChrisBrauer as my home base and main account. Recommendation is to start as many accounts as you need to keep your tweets and audiences engaged with that holy grail of 21st century media - hyperlocal/niche.
- Twittersearch & Hashtags: Just as Technorati tags were a clunky implementation, there seems to be some sort of cache in the start-up media world in using unrefined methods to get everyone feeling like they are actually doing something to shape the tool. Twitter search is a powerful tool to follow conversations on Twitter where Twits engaged in the conversation include a hashtag (eg #G20) in Tweets to be included in the conversation stream on twitter search. This has endless possibilities for launching new campaigns online, generating buzz about a concept or just enhancing access to feeds on ideas for readers. Recommendation is to start your own hashtag, tell all your followers and friends, and experiment with this powerful tool.
- Followers: Left the most important to many of you to last. Am actually really surprised at how poorly thought through this concept is in Twitter. One way to get lots of followers is just to follow a whole bunch of people, if they don't follow you back, stop following them. Do this 1,000 times a day and you'll have tens of thousands of followers in a month. That's the common method of countless marketing irritants on Twitter. This approach is promoted by tools like wefollow that measure only volume of followers as a guage of Twitter popularity. Another way is to bring (or impersonate) huge celebrity status to the tool and watch the followers fall over themselves to follow. But what if you don't want to be a spamming marketer and don't benefit from a priori celebrity status? There really isn't any other way except patience and commitment. Lessons learned from blogging tell you that if you stay consistent in your frequency of tweets, stay on topic, and interact regularly with your audience, they will follow, slowly perhaps, but they will follow. Hope you aren't really surprised that there isn't any credible "get rich quick scheme".
Follow Chris Brauer on Twitter
