Twitter: Who Cares What You're Doing Right Now, Anyway?

SOURCE: IMPLEMENTINGSCRUM.COM Twitter Who Cares What You’re Doing Right Now, Anyway? BY SCOTT ABEL, SOCIAL MEDIA CHOREOGRAPHER * THE CONTENT WRANGLER, INC. * 760.969.3249 * SCOTTABEL@MAC.COM WWW.THECONTENTWRANGLER.COM * WWW.TWITTER.COM/SCOTTABEL * THECONTENTWRANGLER.NING.COM Thursday, June 11, 2009

Thursday, June 11, 2009

What is Twitter? It’s a microblogging website; one of the fastest growing networks on the planet Thursday, June 11, 2009

quot;Twitter is a device-agnostic real-time message-routing platform—which is a fancy way of saying that it can send messages to and receive them from a variety of devices simultaneously, at the moment a message is sent.quot; Sarah Millstein, author of “Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution” (O’Reilly) Thursday, June 11, 2009

What is a Tweet? A post to Twitter is called a Tweet, a 140 (or fewer) character text message Thursday, June 11, 2009

What are Tweets about? They can be status updates, tips/tricks, announcements, ads, responses, etc. Thursday, June 11, 2009

What is a reTweet? A post to Twitter that was posted previously by another user; provides attribution Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twitter: A simple idea The original sketch of the Twitter interface; designed as a status updating tool Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twitter: The ﬁrst iteration Status updates from you to your friends who want to know what you are doing Thursday, June 11, 2009

What are you doing now? It’s not always easy to see the value in answering this simple question Thursday, June 11, 2009

quot;I started using Twitter and then decided it was just too much trouble and I really don't want that much information coming at me all day long. So, I deleted my account.quot; Lisa Seaburg, President, Aeon (XML consulting ﬁrm) Thursday, June 11, 2009

quot;I use it to inform, get news and plug links I ﬁnd. In my opinion, I think that there are a few too many people expressing ‘the right way’ to use Twitter. The whole point is that it is random. It also integrates with your Facebook status, which is very helpful.quot; Monica Valentinelli, copywriter, web analyst Thursday, June 11, 2009

quot;Many people use Twitter for communicating with friends and family. I use Twitter for networking and personal branding. Most of my tweets are business- oriented. I also ﬁnd that Twitter is a great tool for companies to use in their marketing and PR efforts.quot; Pamela Abbazia, SEO Strategist Thursday, June 11, 2009

quot;I use Twitter for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, I use it as persistent messaging between myself and my distributed development team when I need to interact with them between live/virtual meetings. I prefer it over email and IM for short discussions and quick thoughts.” Robert Bectel, Managing Partner, Quorum Sense Consulting Thursday, June 11, 2009

quot;Additionally, I use Twitter to follow the ﬁndings of a select few innovative people/ groups that provide links to interesting solutions as well as articles and traditional blogs. By following smart folks, I have access to an intelligent ﬁlter for marketing and interactive content.” Robert Bectel, Managing Partner, Quorum Sense Consulting Thursday, June 11, 2009

quot;Finally, I use it to communicate with my wife. Our “Tweets” move quickly to email and mobile devices which we both have, and guarantee that we aren’t missing important messages such as ‘Honey, get the kids from school. My meeting is running long’.” Robert Bectel, Managing Partner, Quorum Sense Consulting Thursday, June 11, 2009

quot;I use Twitter to promote the store -- speciﬁcally to post upcoming tasting events (and a reminder on the day of the event), just-arrived beers, to promote new content on our store blog, and notify folks of any special hours or weather closures.” Tiffany (Hereth) Adamowski, Technical Writer and part time beer store manager Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twitter today: How it works Step one: Set up an account Thursday, June 11, 2009

Select a Twitter name Personal brand (or handle) or real name Thursday, June 11, 2009

How it works Step two: Find folks to follow Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow Skim the Twitter public timeline: http://twitter.com/public_timeline Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow Clicking on a photo or user name takes you to that member’s proﬁle page Thursday, June 11, 2009

Sometimes, they find you Posting to Twitter also exposes your profile, your Tweets, and makes you findable Thursday, June 11, 2009

Following When you follow someone, you can see their Tweets - they don’t necessarily see yours Thursday, June 11, 2009

Following Twitter allows you to see a threaded view of your conversations with others Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow The “build it and they will come” mentality isn’t enough to gain large audience Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow Twitter can tap into other services you already use to invite your “contacts” Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow Twitter can email your friends, prospects, co-workers with a personal note from you Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow Twitter can “match” you with others that you may be interested in following Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow Third-party services are also a good way to locate followers of interest; search by topic Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow Keyword search tools can help you spot and automatically follow interesting folks Thursday, June 11, 2009

Deciding who to follow You can also use third-party services like Mr. Tweet - there are many others Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow You can also search the “Twitterverse” using http://search.twitter.com Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finding folks to follow Real-time results show who is using your search term; Follow those that interest you Thursday, June 11, 2009

Revealing conversations Twitter search also shows you the conversation thread, which can be useful Thursday, June 11, 2009

How it works Step three: Create some interesting posts (Tweets) designed to attract followers Thursday, June 11, 2009

@ replying to a Tweet Use @ before a username to respond to a Tweet so everyone else can see Thursday, June 11, 2009

RT (reTweeting) Use RT before @username to give attribution to the person who made the original post Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tweets Text and special characters - 140 characters or fewer, including URL, RT, @ Thursday, June 11, 2009

Following others Clicking the “Follow” button is all that’s required to follow another user Thursday, June 11, 2009

Following others Once you are a “follower” you will see this user’s posts when you view Twitter feed Thursday, June 11, 2009

Following others Once you follow someone, and they follow you back, you can contact them (via DM) Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twittiquette Rules and suggestions for best results Thursday, June 11, 2009

Rule #1 Block mass followers; Following a lot of people, has few followers, made 1 post Thursday, June 11, 2009

Rule #2 If you can’t say it in 140 characters, write a blog post about it and point folks to it Thursday, June 11, 2009

Rule #3 Publish fresh, useful, relevant content; Avoid “Me too!” posts Thursday, June 11, 2009

Rule #4 Decide whether you are posting professional or personal content; Don’t deviate often Thursday, June 11, 2009

Rule #5 Be selective about whom you follow (this depends on your intent, obviously) Thursday, June 11, 2009

Error messages Twitter error messages are often funny, creative gems that yield a quick smile Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twittervision There are many cool and innovative services built on top of Twitter data via the API Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twittervision in 3D Services are being created from Twitter data every day; There’s always something new Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twistory Services are being created from Twitter data every day; There’s always something new Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tweets and Google With a snippet of code you can make your web browser display Twitter results, too! Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tweets and RSS feeds You can search Twitter and make the results an RSS feed that you can reuse elsewhere Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twictionary A dictionary of Twitter terms and jargon Thursday, June 11, 2009

TwitTrans One one free translation service; Send tweet and wait for translated response Thursday, June 11, 2009

Measuring success There are a wide variety of services dedicated to rating, ranking your efforts Thursday, June 11, 2009

The future and Twitter High proﬁle bloggers have replaced writing daily blog posts with frequent Twittering Thursday, June 11, 2009

TWITTER LINKS OF INTEREST TWITTER.COM/SCOTTABEL * SCOTT’S TWITTER FEED TWITTER.COM/STCSANDIEGO * SAN DIEGO STC MRTWEET.COM * RECOMMENDS FOLKS TO FOLLOW TWINFLUENCE.COM * MEASURES REACH, RANKS USERS SEARCH.TWITTER.COM * REAL-TIME TWITTER SEARCH BITLY.COM * SHORTENS URLS, TRACKS LINK CLICKS TWITPIC.COM * SEND PHOTOS VIA TWITTER PING.FM * AUTO-ROUTES TWEETS TO OTHER SERVICES TWITTERVISION.COM * ENTERTAINING TWITTER USE TWEETDECK.COM * STREAMLINES NOTIFICATIONS TWITTERHOLIC.COM * RANKS TWITTER USERS Thursday, June 11, 2009

SCOTT ABEL, SOCIAL MEDIA CHOREOGRAPHER THE CONTENT WRANGLER, INC. * 760.969.3249 SCOTTABEL@MAC.COM WWW.THECONTENTWRANGLER.COM WWW.TWITTER.COM/SCOTTABEL THECONTENTWRANGLER.NING.COM Thursday, June 11, 2009

Twitter: Who Cares What You're Doing Right Now, Anyway?

Scott Abel

Twitter: Who Cares What You're Doing Right Now, Anyway?