Tweets on Twitter
Posted on | December 18, 2008 |
I joined Twitter back in April of this year as a curiosity. “What could you possibly do with 140 characters?” I said to myself. But all the buzz had to be about something.
Flash forward to today. I have two accounts, one personal and one for my company. My personal one sends out tweets (one entry on Twitter) with every post from this blog. Benefit: Another way to be updated on new content outside of http, email or RSS. Neat. Another benefit is the immediacy. Since brevity is forced upon twitterers, it allows one to digest tons of information in a short time. In today’s information overload atmosphere, all aggregators and filters you can use to maximize your time are essential. If you don’t use them and you are information-hungry (for whatever reason), you will spend all of your time catching up and nothing else. There is literally too much information available to not use filtering agents.
So I’ve introduced you to auto-tweets from blogs. The Wordpress plugin I use is Twitter Tools. It’s boss. Great features like:
Create a daily digest blog post from your tweets?
Tweets to show in sidebar:
Create tweets from your sidebar?
Give Twitter Tools credit? (Dude, I’m giving you a shout-out now!)
… make it flexible on how you want to share, plus there is a “Write Tweet” option in your “Write” section of the admin. Thumbs up.
On to other ways to Tweet. On the iPhone, I use TwitterFon and Twitteriffic. For a guy like me that uses two accounts often, I use for each account. Twitteriffic allows you to take a photo and upload as a tweet via twitpic - a bonus as free image hosting and tinyurl included automatically. You can also post your GPS coordinates. Tres cool. TwitterFon allows you to search tweet by location - people near you using Twitter via access to the phone’s GPS. Imagine the random communication and meetup possibilities. Click on a GPS link on your iPhone and it goes straight to Google Maps. No joke. Imagine that location-challenged friend tweeting their location and you finding them so you can get to cocktails faster? Awesome. I just popped into the iTunes Apps Store (Social Networking) and saw Tweeter and Twitterlink. I’m sure more and more will come as people figure out more ways to get on the microblogging bandwagon.
And then there is Twhirl. It’s a desktop client that uses Adobe AIR. Cool features allow you to monitor multiple accounts simultaneously. Minimize the windows and you get transparent popovers that disappear quickly.
Last but not least - bring it all together with FriendFeed. Wrangle all your social apps into one space. I have the RSS feeds from my two blogs, Flickr, DIGG, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pandora, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook accounts all feeding in one place. And when I write something new where I publish content, it makes an announcement via the app for Facebook. Only stinky thing about that is I can’t personalize the link as I usually do. I guess that automation has it’s negative aspects, too. I did notice that having FriendFeed connected to my RSS and Tweets caused double-posts. I just canceled the RSS on one thing and now it publishes the Tweets.
Geez! How many ways to read and post 140 characters? And these are just the ones I use.
How or why use Twitter? Here is how I do it.
Personally: Blog updates. Friends on Twitter like reading it there, and the opportunity for a flash-spread of information in Twitter is greater than anything else out there today. Twitterers are fast. Like on speed. Word spreads quickly. If you don’t believe it, watch either one of these HubSpot webinars 1, 2. They have one tool, TwitterGrader, that they only promoted via Twitter and nowhere else and have performed an amazing amount of grader operations for people in such a short time. My score for my personal account is 64. The business account I run is an 84. I do not use Twitter for too much personal communication, as I have enough to occupy my time without hovering over that all day ;)
One wonderful example of it all working together is when I posted a link to a podcast I made in Facebook, a friend of mine - Mark Wallace at SnapFactory.com, Tweeted this, “jmarkwallace: New Podcast from my friend Matt Hill: On Creativity. Good stuff Matt!! http://tinyurl.com/5p42m5″ He also posted it on his Facebook profile. After this, I sent him a personal message via FB, thanking him for being such a damn swell guy. I could have used Twitter, but since he posted first on FB, I thanked him there. Starting to see how one pebble can cause a tidal wave? The important thing here is to realize you have to participate for it to work. Be there, be genuine and the rest will fall into place.
Business: The business account I run is informational only. Seconds after I post any new webpage, promotion, blog post, press release, I send out a tweet with a link. And usually as I “follow” other professionals, I pick up 5-10 more followers. It’s self-sustaining, and I believe that a facts-only account is a great way to run a business twitter. If you have other social-savvy people in your organization that are good communicators and into customer service, it is a great way to keep in touch with people faster than email.
And… it is all indexed. No joke. Try this out: search.twitter.com
You want to know what people are saying about you/your brand/your favorite something RIGHT NOW? Search here. Granted, there is a smaller percentage of people using Twitter than Facebook than MySpace than YouTube than Google (in order), but it is a slice of something. And it is immediate.
Here is a search for “Cut Paper Art”.
Twitter use and etiquette:
If you want to “trend” a topic, simply use “#” right in front of a word (no space). For instance, if I wanted ot trend my name (LOL), it would be #matthill.
If you want to reply directly to someone, use “@”. reply to me with @matthill
If you want to re-post something someone tweeted, use “RT”, which stands for “re-Tweet”. Example: “RT New Blog Post: Tweets on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/3h3eag“.
Most of all, just use it to learn. People are coming up with new ways to use it and communicate in short form every week.
And for once I joined something early enough to get the account name “matthill” Double-w00t!
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3 Responses to “Tweets on Twitter”
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Social
- Macworld's iPhone 4 cover a self-portrait http://shar.es/mL4ZP @Twitter
- Photo: Wayne Coyne descended upon us to share his rock wisdom. http://tumblr.com/xdcefgsy0 @Twitter
- RT @theflaminglips: Go see the NYC premiere of Winnebago Man this Friday! Tickets http://bit.ly/dB1PwT Congrats to Ben & Jack! http://w ... @Twitter
- @theflaminglips Thanks for a rejuvenating show last night. Wayne, you are a gift to the world. http://bit.ly/bnB3w3 @Twitter
- Flaming Lips show last night was stellar, as usual. My iPhone photos (with tweaks) surprised me: http://bit.ly/bnB3w3 @Twitter
December 19th, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
More good stuff!! I was just looking for a way to update twitter automatically from my blog. Now I have the answer. Thanks dude!
December 19th, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
…and thanks for the shout out.
December 20th, 2008 @ 11:57 am
Anytime, Mark. Good people doing good things deserve credit!