Twitter. WTF?

Twitter. WTF? A lo-fi, hands-on show-and-tell about Oprah’s new favourite thing (this time it’s personal) www.markpollard.net www.twitter.com/markpollard

For some reason, you are here (a cocktail of peer pressure, fear and curiosity?)

And maybe you’re thinking...

Isn’t Twitter for egomaniacs?

I seriously do not need new friends!

Isn’t it just Facebook – but with less stuff?

No one will find me interesting.

Does Oprah really do her own tweetage?

FFS what am I doing here – now?

Shut up about Twitter already!

You aren’t alone

Caviar-ts Perspective (not rules) Passion (not evangelism) Help (not selling)

My story starts with failure (followed by an 18-month ‘break’)

Then I worked out who to blame (Twitter)

I'm Tweeting abt thinking abt what to Tweet abt. Or is 'Twitter' a verb too? Because, if it is, then I'm Twittering abt what to Twitter abt! What are you doing?

Then, in August 2008, I changed my steez and got back into it

1. I committed (I decided to deep dive and go along for the ride)

2. I grew purpose (to be useful)

3. I went ‘real’ (real name, photo)

4. I told people what I was about (profile bio)

5. I followed friends of friends (and interesting people)

6. I followed a few mega egos (then un-followed them)

7. I shared and listened (and waited, and refreshed)

8. I measured (what was of interest, when – using Poprl and BudURL )

8 early lessons

It takes effort

There is a lot of recycling

It can be addictive

Anxiety feeds the beast

One-dimension-itis isn’t cool

Twitter thrives on appreciation

Rejection happens

Lifestyle change 8. (the big one)

The 2 best things about Twitter

Meeting people and information exchange

<Break> A plain English explanation

5 tools I use most Web To tweet, find people to follow, see who’s following Twitter search To find deals, product recomm’ns, like-minded people Tweetdeck To watch the stream, manage the noise and tweet Hootsuite To manage multiple accounts and set up tweets to send later Tiny Twitter To tweet from my phone

RT @username RT = re-tweet This is akin to an email forward but you give public props to the person who helped you find it

#hashtag A way to publicly ‘file’ your tweets

#followfriday A weekly prop-a-thon where you tell people who’s worth following

watching streams and backchannels Watching what people are tweeting live via websites like Monitter and Twitterfall #hashtags may help organise discussion at events, about TV shows or issues

stalkernomics The business practice of online eaves-dropping and door-knocking IE If you mention a brand, don’t be surprised if they start following you... and maybe even trying to contact you directly

URL shorteners http://bit.ly/xjgPu How you can take a really long URL and prevent it from using up your glorious 140 characters

fakes, spammers, bots and egos on auto-pilot People who follow you and just have tweets with links to their websites People who are following tonnes of people but don’t have many updates People who pay other people to tweet for them

Advice you didn’t ask for

Find a purpose without being one-dimensional

Commit to giving it a go – frequently

Find interesting people to interact with – and interact

Balance sharing with responding – create if you can

Tune into the stream – don’t obsess about missing stuff

Promote your Twitter thing

Network off Twitter and offline

and don’t need to agree with

For some reason, you are still here (and I thank you for it) www.markpollard.net www.twitter.com/markpollard If you enjoyed the read, share it with someone in need