DISQUS

Phao Loo · 1 year ago

Pretty informative and useful tips. I should now think twice before tweet, I don't want to be stand in line with strangers at the grocery store

Juliann Grant · 1 year ago

Richard,
Great post and good notes to share. Thanks, there is an art to Twitter with subtle protocols that can be confusing to new folks who join Twitter.

You mentioned to use DMs sparingly. I've seen different practices of this. From some folks I follow, I get DMs anytime they want to talk to me directly and they don't use the Twitter stream. It usually happens when I @reply to someone and I get a DM back.

I do like to greet people with a personal DM when I'm following someone. I don't believe in blanket welcome statements, I look at each profile and blog associated with it before I send anything.

I think it really is a personal style issue. Some prefer to keep conversations in the Twitter timeline, others would prefer not. I'm learning about each person as I go, based on how they "dance" in Twitter. I just try to gauge responses and follow along.

Thanks for sharing your tips. The last post was great too!

Chris Allison · 1 year ago

Thanks for the thoughtful approach, Richard! I enjoyed your tips. However, I would disagree in regards to following everyone back.

Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where someone's tweets contribute little value to, or in fact take away value from your Twitter experience. A friend recently tweeted: "how long do you go before you make the decision to unfollow someone?". Not following back everyone that follows me means I run into this much less. In the outside world (where you walk around) you don't have time to be friends with everyone- a sad but very real truth. This raises the question is Twitter different? I've approached it the same. What do you think?

Richard Reeve · 1 year ago

Interesting points. The DM practice can certainly be used anyway anyone wants, and I can see how some might prefer to take conversations private. My sense is that once we go there, we are no longer taking advantage of the tool as a public marketplace, and are basically texting at that point.

Regarding the unfollow. I too have had to unfollow some, but amazingly few. Less then twenty for tweeting is in a distracting manner. The point I'm making is the difference between a 1 to 10 ratio and relatively equal ratio. Not following the majority of the followers back sets up an implied relationship that what I have to say is more important than what you have to say, and I do not but into that. Philosophically, I think these tools can represent the democratization of media production, unless we go about giving that possibility away.

Chris Bultman · 1 year ago

Good information. I like the bullet point "nothing to share, share nothing". This helps make twitter a good micro-blog source rather than a cheesy IM conversation.

Great thoughts, keep them coming

Mayur Pathak · 1 year ago

Thanks for such informative points. really helpful, especially to those who are new to social media universe like me.

Amy Flynn ~ allaboutenergy · 1 year ago

Hi Richard,

Great ideas, I try to do many of them, not sure if I manage to. I do get carried away with the stream and conversations so the balance goes out the window. Then I think of my poor followers! I will use idea of seeing my tweet stream as a short story. (except for all those wild interactions!)


It seems there has developed a "politics" of following! I tend to mirror Chris' thought above. I currently don't follow everyone back. Not because I think my tweets are more important than any others. I try to manage my follows. I have limited time on twitter and I read my stream on the web and there is no way I can keep up. Since I do like to converse back and forth and have social interactions, it becomes overwhelming when too many tweets fly by at the speed of light. I reply to all my @allaboutenergy tweets and it seems that the more people you follow, the more the only way someone will get their tweet read is to @reply anyway.

I have also noticed a lot of people follow people only to get a follow back and once they get their follow back ... they unfollow! The only way to keep up with this is to constantly go through your followers.

What works for me at the moment is to go stop by peoples pages and read the streams on their page and reply to particular tweets.

Thanks for a thought provoking and idea filled post!

Matt Randall · 1 year ago

Absolutely great advice. I'm relatively new to using Twitter, so I will be sure to follow these tips. A lot of it sounds like common sense, but it's good to have that message reinforced to people. Happy tweeting everyone.

Ian Shepherd · 1 year ago

Great list, I agree with almost every point, apart (again) from the "who to follow" issue. I agree that a 1/10 ratio implies "broadcaster" immediately, but I don't have the time to read the tweets of everyone who follows me - I keep the list to a fairly select minimum of people who regularly post interesting or stimulating tweets. I want my stream to be fun to read, without having to skim, too much. Hopefully people who follow don't mind - I've only had a few people drop out, so far...

mary · 1 year ago

Thanks for an excellent post. I tend to side with those who do not follow everyone who follows them, at least so far. Reading time is just too limited. Though being selective in choosing who to follow means I spend time examining the tweets of those who follow me, so it's a trade-off, I suppose. Seems like there's a lot of mindless following of anyone for the purpose of broadcasting, and I don't want to get involved on that level.

Richard Reeve · 1 year ago

So, the follow back philosophy is hurdle. Let me frame it in this way. I follow 5000. That in no way means I'm able to track all that each says, but it does mean at anytime I do dip into the twitter stream, my content feed is open to the happenstance comment from any of them which could be an opening to interesting discoveries about you, them, life, etc...
And the same is true on the oppoite side of the equation. It mens something to me that Guy Kawasaki, Liz Strauss, Robert Scoble or Chris Brogan (Obama for that matter) might see what's unfolding in my stream. There are a great many other influencers that do not follow back and to me it says that they are not open to the unexpected content from the rest of us.

Now the point about limiting follows so as to keep up with everything, that's what I use twitter search for. I regularly search usernames of folks whose stream I want to see in it's narrative unfolding.

For two months I stayed under eighty follows until I made a decision to swim deep into the twitter stream with the goal of finding my 'peeps'... The choice has not been a disappointment. For every 1000 additional follows, I discover at least 10 new practitioners that enrich my life in a deep way, and a hundred that provide interesting interactions.

sean808080 · 1 year ago

I'm intrigued by the number of bright people that can't get with the culture and practice of twitter.
These tips will go a long way to helping them get up to speed.
Great stuff here....

sean
http://sean808080.com

Kathy · 1 year ago

As a new Twitter member, I appreciate the point about whether or not I would make these comments to a stranger in line at the grocery store. It is a fine line on over or undersharing. Thanks for the points!

Agile Cyborg · 1 year ago

Damn, you've twittered me onto your blog-most-informative. I shall bookmark. Interesting to note: I do not post my entire name, blog or site and promote or sell nothing on twitter which frees me entirely from the grocery line rule. Yes, this is intentional. I use Twitter under Agile Cyborg just for non-capitalist connection and expression, which includes profanity and general wickedness, from time to time.

Tom Allinder · 1 year ago

Absolutely great Twitter gouge! Thanks so much! A Twitter handbook.

moon_fly · 1 year ago

Thanks for the Twitter tips. I am fairly new to Twitter and oftentimes find some of it's protocols perplexing.

Do you have a method for finding interesting folks to follow? So far, I have simply let myself browse through other's followers, but I find it very time consuming. Plus, you can only discern so much from people's avatars and screen names. I wouldn't want to just follow everybody and then un-follow, I know enough to know that practice is frowned upon. I have limited time to play with Twitter and feel building a follower/following quite time consuming, although very rewarding and entertaining.

I think Twitter is the best thing to happen for Moonfly in a long time!

Snow Vandemore · 1 year ago

I would preface the "follow everyone back" with one word of caution -- I believe the exception would be if the avatar or twitter name contains any type of profanity or pornographic images. I block those.

Agile Cyborg · 1 year ago

@Snow-
Outside of religious obligation (which I understand but respectfully disengage myself from) those who wish to 'ultimately profit' from the type of social interaction discussed here will find little choice but to mainstream themselves by avoiding shades of deviancy.

A certain level of anonymity can be a wonderful way to experience social networking at its fullest and most profound- if one so chooses.

Matt Searles · 1 year ago

I think I'm much less conscious of my twittering.. Or its like.. there's a bunch of issues which.. lets call them social media strategy issues.. or maybe social media life issues.. and then those that are specific to twitter.. and so you know.. I've meditated on those endlessly.. but when it comes to actually tweeting, I don't think of them at all. Kind of like when walking I don't actually think about putting one foot in front of the other, or balance, or any of that.

When I was first on twitter I was more then a little shy and self conscious.. and feeling like my tweeting was kinda bad.. then at a tweet up somewhere.. I met someone who was like "oh yeah, you're Matt Searles, I follow your tweets!" to which I of course extended my sympathies.. but it turned out he was "a fan" and what he liked was that I'd seem to say anything.. or that I wasn't holding back or wasn't sorta.. doing a lot of image management stuff. Or maybe I was just debating with a lot of marketers at the time..

I was at.. I think it was a social media breakfast sometime back.. on twitter.. where Pistachio batted clean up on the presentations.. and of course she was brilliant on it.. I think her point was more or less that twitter is a million things to a million different people..

I think of it like "what is good web design?" Well.. the measure of what good web design is.. kinda depends on your business strategy, or whatever strategy... how you present your self in social media vill depends on the values of your personal brand.. so everything, maybe sorta, comes down to that.

I think of Allan Watts asking "who are you." Apparently Odysseus was the no man who is every man.. that there burning bush simply said "I am," while the Zen masters ask us to show us the face we had prior to being born... I've read articles trying to tell me that these kinds of questions have nothing to do with personal branding, say in the Harvard Business Review.. lol, but they can't fool me!

I think the more we embrace the inward mysteries.. the more we see the possibilities. And ultimately.. I think its those mysteries thought ought to define one's twitter strateg-a-ry

Richard Reeve · 1 year ago

@moonfly One of my strategies: I do keyword searches in twitter search and feed them into my google reader. As I'm interested in Jungian psychology, its real easy to create a focused keyword search using the terminology of used by folks that reference an understanding of Jung. Then I go follow them and they often follow back.

Kim · 1 year ago

What a fantastic post. The main point I come away with is to use Twitter with respect. Treat your micro posting as a type of art form. And the reminder that your tweets paint a portrait of who you are was wonderful. Oh, and thanks for the follow! : D

Sheryl Loch · 1 year ago

I would say the most important thing is to be yourself.
If you tweet something that I would not say in a line of strangers - that's ok, I would rather know the real you rather than a fake twit!
If someone does not like what I have to say that is fine, don't follow.
There is no right or wrong way to tweet. Some will love you and well, others won't.

kelly · 1 year ago

WoW! You have one of the most comprehensive list on what to tweet and they're Info Gold! Thank you so much for this! Keep it up!!!

Ian Shepherd · 1 year ago

Here are some suggestions on how to find interesting people to follow on Twitter:

Find Interesting People To Follow On Twitter