I had all but forgotten about this great video until I saw it again today. I was at the College of Charleston taking part in a presentation on Social Media with Dr. Bing Pan. He is well respected in the field and in Hospitality & Tourism Management, and it was on honor to be on stage with him. Anyway, he started the presentation out with this video, and I was immediately reminded of how good it is and how hard hitting some of the facts are. To that end, I thought I would post it here for your enjoyment.
For more from the people who made this, just check out SocialNomics.
Twitter has taken the Internet by storm in recent months, but there are still a lot of people and businesses who haven’t signed on or who have but just don’t get it. More than any other communication method, Twitter can be a bit like trying to sip from the fire hose. And to keep that water metaphor going, if you jump directly into the deep end of Twitter you will either drown or be eaten by the sharks.
The key to Twitter is in remembering that it is a communications medium, and to truly communicate the conversation must be two-way. You should be looking for quality in those you follow and who follow you, not quantity. Start by following your friends and business colleagues. Only after you get comfortable should you really start branching out. And, like any good conversationalist knows, the best way to interact with people is not by lecturing but by asking intelligent, open-ended questions. If you need help, just ask and people will usually jump right in.
Finally, so that you will be taken seriously and get the most out of your Twitter experience, there are a few things you need to do early on. The pointers below won’t change your life, but they will change your Twitter outlook. Just as with any professional presentation, you need to be aware of how people see you online and how that image creates an impression of you and your business.
Fill out your Twitter profile completely. This means name, location, bio, and URL. Nothing is more frustrating, and confusing to me, than to go to the Twitter profile of a company or professional and find nothing there. Would you hand out a business card that listed no means to contact you? Then why would you have a profile with no URL? As for the geographic location, it doesn’t need to be specific but should at least let people know what time zone you are in. You can set all this by clicking on “Settings” up in the top right of your Twitter screen.
Change the default avatar. The avatar is that little picture that appears beside each tweet to represent you. The default one is ugly, means you didn’t care enough to change it, and represents you in a bad way. Preferably change it to a nice little picture of yourself, but at least change it to a picture or logo of some sort. People come to recognize those avatars, so chose something that you want to be identified with – and the default one isn’t it. You can set you avatar picture by clicking on “Settings” and then “Picture” up in the top right of your Twitter screen.
Don’t follow too many. Especially while you are still learning and gaining speed, don’t follow too many people. First of all, you will get swamped and get lost. Second of all, other people gauge how “real” you are by how many people you are following vs how many are following you. So, if you have followed 700 people but only 10 are following you – chances are pretty good that you are a spammer of some sort. Try not to follow more than about twice as many people as are following you. So, if you only have 5 people following you, don’t follow more than 10. I know it can be hard, but if you start by following your friends, colleagues, and me(!) you will find you can build number fairly quickly. Remember, the goal here is quality not quantity.
Give it a rest. OK, this is an odd one, especially for me. The truth is though that there are times when you should just step away from the keyboard – or cell phone as the case may be. If you are using Twitter for professional purposes, then you really don’t want to tweet when you are inebriated, under medication, or very late at night. The Internet has a very long memory and the things you say have a way of coming back to haunt you. Additionally, people who are following you for your professional wisdom may get tired of hearing about where you are going to lunch. Sure you need to inject some humanity and humor into your messages, just be careful not to overdo it.
Twitter can be daunting so take it slow but don’t give up. And don’t forget to follow me and send me a tweet!
Twitter is great. I love it. It is fun, it is informative, and it can get out of control fast. If you are using this great social media party-line, then sooner or later you will start to wonder how to gain control of what is going on there. While there are lots of excellent applications for actually using Twitter from your desktop, such Twhirl and TweetDeek which are Adobe Air cross-platform applications, what I am looking at here are three web-based tools that will help you actually manage your friends and followers.
The first tool we come to is actually called “Friend of Follow”. This site will show you a simple but visually appealing tabbed overview of those people who you are following but who are not following you back, those who are following you but that you don’t follow, and those that are both followed and following. While the display is nice, and by mousing over each user you can get some basic information, Friend or Follow doesn’t really provide enough information for my to find it to useful for most uses. What I do find useful sometimes is that I can put the people listed in order by location or number of followers. This is perfect for when I want to know if there are people local to my area I’m not following.
Next up is “MyCleener”. Ever wondering which of your friends are deadbeats? Or which of your friends just isn’t keeping up? MyCleener will pull the list of people you are following and then put then in order by the last time they tweeted. I was actually surprised to find out that one of the people I was following hadn’t tweeted in over a year. While technically there is nothing wrong with following someone who doesn’t tweet often, it does inflate your following to followers ratio. And many people, myself included, use that ration as a kind of rule of thumb to your legitimacy. Continue Reading »
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The first tool we come to is actually called “
