Twitter: Not Just for Over-Texted Teens
OK, let’s settle this right now. I get a lot of incredulous looks from my friends. You’re on Twitter?? Who cares what I’m eating for breakfast? Sounds like a waste of time.
Well, I could argue the benefits of sharing the details of your life with friends and family, but that’s another topic - and I use Facebook for that. For now let’s just say that I agree with you. I don’t use Twitter that way, and I wouldn’t follow anyone who did - friend, family or favorite deity. For me, Twitter is a business and learning tool. I use it to stay abreast of what’s new in my profession, and likewise to share with other interested parties. And I get a LOT out of it. Twitter is a realtime live feed of all the best tips, tricks and discoveries made by people with similar interests as myself, pre-filtered and delivered straight to my hungry brain in a tidy, little package. Awesome.
I said that the feed is “pre-filtered” - What does that mean and how does it work? With Twitter you can “follow” anyone you want. It’s up to you. Simply put: I don’t follow people who tweet about breakfast, movies, moods, concerts, or any number of other uninteresting, “teenagery” topics. I am strictly interested in finding the little gems that make my work better, faster, more relevant, etc. It’s a learning tool. I follow people who post useful, interesting or educational things. If you start talking about Will Smith - you’re dumped in a heartbeat. Don’t waste my time.
About that - Isn’t weeding through all the “bad” feeds to find the good ones time-consuming? This is the beauty of Twitter. First of all, this isn’t really a problem, if you only follow people who say interesting things, as stated above. Second, every post is limited in length to 140 characters, so I can tell in 5 seconds or less if a post interests me. In 1 minute, I can scan all the morning’s updates and move on. Most useful posts include a link to an outside article, blog, etc. If there is something worth following, you can chase it down. If not, you don’t follow the link, and you’ve lost very little of your precious time.
What kind of “gems” do you really get out of this? As a graphic designer and aspiring web developer, I get all kinds of useful content. A link to an artist’s blog can be inspiring for days or weeks. Maybe it’s a link to a website full of free fonts, plugins, or texture files. Maybe it’s a how-to page about using a feature of my favorite Adobe software product. I get a lot of useful information for educating my clients and language for communicating expertly about my profession. Sometimes it’s a link to an industry event that I might like to attend. Web developers find and share snippets of code, online resources, the latest technology trends, updates and how-tos. I’m telling you. It’s a goldmine - if you follow the right people.
So how do you find the right people? Start with people you know, in the business. Look for Twitter links at the bottom of your favorite blogs. Filter the Twitter feed for relevant topics with a tool like Tweet Grid (highly recommended). Publish your Twitter username on your website/blog/Facebook profile, and start tweeting valuable content yourself. When you start gaining followers who are interested in what you are saying, they are likely worth following back. As they say, if you want a friend, you have to be a friend. Network, share, inspire, learn. Go forth and tweet!
comment// Geoffrey Smith
date// November 13th, 2009
Great post Dave. I have been getting the “Twitter? What’s the point?” questions lately too. I try to explain the beauty of it, but it’s almost one of those things that you just have to jump in and figure out for yourself. And there’s certainly more than one way to use it.
But I have to admit, I do tend to mix a little pleasure with my business. So I will completely understand if you unfollow me for one too many tweets about what cocktail I am drinking at Friday happy hour. That said, I take my cocktails very seriously, so who knows, you just might learn something!