Twitter is here to stay, and has become a potent communication tool in many industries. I recently received a request for advice on how better to use Twitter, and thought I would share some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years as an avid IT industry tweeter.
- Twitter Zen: A Global Conversation like No Other The most important concept to grasp is the fundamental nature of Twitter: It is an ongoing, global, democratic conversation. It is not a blog, USENET, Facebook or MySpace, or an instant message platform, though it does have certain elements of all of those.
- Twitter Zen: Setting up Your Account When you create a Twitter account, you will be asked to enter some profile information, including your name, URL, description, and photo. All of these are critically important: Many people will look at them to decide whether they want to follow you. If you have not set these up, other Twitter users likely will ignore you!
- Twitter Zen: Joining the ConversationIt can be difficult to start using Twitter, since you must decide who to follow and it will take some time before people follow you back, let alone interact with you. Imagine yourself walking into a room full of interesting people, all having conversations with each other. Do you expect everyone to notice that you have arrived, stop what they’re doing, and greet you warmly? Or do you expect that you will need to find someone interesting and join their conversation?
- Twitter Zen: The Four Conversational ParadigmsTwitter can be confusing for the uninitiated, and the fact that there are effectively four different ways of viewing it certainly contributes. Although the main Twitter stream seems like a unified set of short messages, clients view it in very different ways.
That’s the series so far. But I’ve had questions and comments, and intend to write more in the future! Watch the series url, http://foskettservices.com/series/twitter-zen/ or this page, or maybe even follow me on Twitter!
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