I do believe that I’m officially a twit now. I have been signed up and using Twitter for a while but I’ve only recently started to be active with it. Chris Brogan has promised to stop blogging about Twitter so I guess I’ll have to start.
The problem that I see with Twitter and the rest of the social media crowd is just figuring out what I’m supposed to do with it. Keep in mind that figuring out what I can do is not the problem — it’s figuring out what I should do. I have the same dilemma with Facebook, Digg and Delicious too. I haven’t been brave enough to tackle any more as yet but LinkedIn and MySpace are on my to do list .
The biggest issue I see right now is what purpose should I find for the various tools. From what I’ve seen there are many ways to use them. This is what I’ve discovered on Twitter so far.
- Communication between existing off-line friends
- Communication between existing on-line friends and looking for new friends
- Networking for business contacts
- Networking for website traffic
- Putting out a message to followers
Most of the follows that I have seem to be a blend of 2 or more of these. I, personally, fall into the first four of these categories although I must admit the business angle is more important to me. I tend to use e-mail and Facebook for the personal stuff. I still enjoy the banter and conversation with people that I’ve met here.
There is still a lot for me to sort out. It is a big investment of time. There are some people who have more than 10,000 people that they are following. I don’t believe that they realistically are reading everything that they are following — even at 140 characters per tweet that must amount to a fair size novel if every person they follow only tweets once a day. So that means people are following someone but not really paying attention. This is probably to allow an increase of followers since you are limited to 110% of the number that you follow.
There are a lot of opinions about what is acceptable in Twitter. I actually follow @twetiquette which posts some guidelines, but @briancarter probably said it best when I jokingly asked where the rules for Twitter were written. He replied “in your heart my friend.”
So, take a chance and try it out for yourself. Tweet what you want, when you want. Follow whomever you like. Unfollow those who get tedious or oversell. See what is there and don’t be afraid to change the rules as you go. Let me know what you find out.
Shalom
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Tags: how to use, Social Media, Twitter
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