Today is exactly 2 weeks since I signed up for Twitter and started using it “for real”, and have I learned a thing or two!!! This post will sum up some of the things I’ve learned so far, my experiences and recommendations.
The direct impacts Twitter have had on me involves:
- Relaunching my website, as I thought it would be interesting to see how it would turn out, when I “advertise” my blog posts through Twitter. Also, for some time I’ve been needing a public place to publish some of the things I have on my mind, so this Twitter thing seemed to be a good idea.
- Reading a ton of blogs and articles, almost everyday. Back in my pre-Twitter days, I mostly just read the local newspaper online as well as TUAW (Apple blog), in addition to some forums once in a while. Post-Twitter, I’ve come across websites and blogs I never knew existed – and they have alot of great content, articles and theories, that I enjoy reading.
- I’m much more updated, because the important news spread to Twitter faster than I would otherwise have received them (by my daily visit to the newspaper sites).
- I connect with new and interesting people, that I’ve never met or known before.
Spam & Bots
Too many people will “follow you, hoping you will follow back” – and then all you will get from them, is a daily advertisement or affiliate link to some kind of product or service. Annoying, but those people are everywhere. Before I follow somebody back, I check their previous tweets to see if I find them interesting, and if the amount of ads are acceptable. If everything is OK, I will follow back. If it then turns out they start “direct messaging” me with special offers and discount, I unfollow them again – maybe even block them, if they really annoyed me.
There’s also the bots, most likely porn bots. They will follow thousands of people, having nothing else than a link to their porn website and maybe a few tweets with porn links as well. Bots. Ignore them. Block them if you feel like it.
Re-tweeting, thank you!
Retweet/re-tweet, or simply “RT”, is when somebody copies a tweet putting “RT” in front of it. It’s an easy way to get your tweet out to a lot of people. But it’s not easy getting a retweet. Your tweet will have to be really fun or contain an interesting link, that your followers will find so interesting that they simply must share it with their followers. Usually a retweet will contain your user name (e.g. @techpatio) in the tweet, so people will know who it originally came from – and a way to let the original tweeter know, that you have just retweeted.
The power of a retweet can be amazing. I’ve had a link to my website posted by somebody with 20,000 followers – the same day, my daily amount of visitors to this blog was increased over 10 times. I can’t wait till next time that happens 🙂
Edit: Thanks to dougstech for retweeting about this very article, appreciate it!
Twitters worth following!
Some twitter users I would recommend everybody to follow. I follow these on a daily basis (listed in no particular order):
- GregoryDCollins: This guy tweets like there’s no tomorrow. Mostly links to news articles and rarely any ad links in his tweets.
- Celebrities: hotforwords (Marina Orlova), donttrythis (Adam Savage), officialTila (Tila Tequila).
- “Internet people”: chrispirillo (Chris Pirillo), ijustine (Justine Ezarik), Scobleizer.
- Tech news twitters: TheTechNewsBlog, dougstech, appletweets, CaliLewis, NataliDelConte.
- Web stuff: NorthSouthMedia, GeoffSchultz, TomDuong.
Following the above people on Twitter, should get you started pretty well. You should also consider checking out my highly recommended ways of searching on Twitter.
So, to recap on this whole Twitter thing: I like it, so far. But with Facebooks beta launch of the new Publisher that allows you to post updates for the world to see, I’m not sure I’ll keep using Twitter. I probably will, for the time being. Otherwise software should allow me to post just once and it will automatically be pushed to FriendFeed, Twitter and Facebook.