Twitter 102 – Good Twitizenship

June 12, 2009 By 4 Comments

If you read the previous post in this series A Gentle Introduction to Twitter or Twitter 101 for Non Majors, you’ve gotten your Twitter account set up and you’ve sent your first Tweet.

Today let’s step back and look at right and wrong reasons for Twittering.

Being a Good Twitizen

Some Good Reasons for Twittering

  • Read interesting information
  • Do Marketing Research
  • Spot trends
  • Keep in touch with your customers
  • Meet and communicate with interesting people
  • Share what interests me
  • Keep in contact with friends and family
  • Keep up-to-date with news
  • Giving Customer Service
Some Bad Reasons for Twittering
  • I only want to sell my products
  • I only want to sell my services
  • I want to broadcast to the world
  • Twitter is only a channel for my sales
What I’m saying is that Twitter is a community, a neighborhood, a village and most of all a conversation. If you want to be part of it, give as well as take. If your only purpose ins using Twitter is push your products or services on other Twitter users, you’re going to fail. That’s not to say you can’t generate business from Twitter, you can — but do it by being a good Twittizen.

Note: If you haven’t realized by now, Twitter lends itself to creating new words and bad puns based on the the name Twitter — feel free to join in.

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The Silly Landgrab — Get Your Facebook Vanity URL Tonight

June 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Just to show no matter how we much all complain about never having enough time, today’s big news, besides anticipating tomorrow’s Northern Hemisphere World Naked Bike Ride (remember it is winter down south), is that at tonight at 9:01 PDT Facebook is going to start issuing “vanity” URL for user accounts.

If you want to participate and grab your name or your favorite nickname or Twitter Id — be prepared to login into your Facebook account tonight after (at) 9:01 PDT.  At that point you’ll get an automatic prompt to pick your new Facebook URL.

In practical terms this means it will be easier to share your Facebook page with your friends — you currently have a unique identifier for your account, but it’s hard to remember or share since it’s mostly numerics, mine is http://www.facebook.com/people/Dan-Perlman/533795967, not that I actually think of myself as 533595967.

Those of you not out here, set your alarm clocks.

Thanks, Caroline McCarthy @ CNET.

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Filed Under: Kinda Silly, Memes, Social Websites, Technology Tagged With: , ,

A Gentle Introduction to Twitter or Twitter 101 for Non-Majors

June 11, 2009 By 1 Comment

twitter-logoAssuming you haven’t been hanging out under a rock off the grid, you’ve likely heard about Twitter, we’ve even written about it here a couple of dozen times. It’s the micro-blogging social network site where you can post-140 character “Tweets” to share what you’re doing, thinking, reading or just about anything else with your “followers“. The Oprah recently turned up the steam on Twitter by starting to Tweet herself on her afternoon talk show.

See Oprah Tweet.

If you’ve thought about giving Twitter a try and joining the global conversation, but just haven’t got around to it — here’s a gentle introduction to the world of Twitter and micro-blogging.  The first part of the introduction will get you signed up for Twitter and your account personalized so that it best reflects who you are.

Getting Started

This is the easy part. Go to twitter.com and push the big green button and you’re on your way.

twitter-join-button

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Meta Link Bait – This week’s Best 11 List of Lists

April 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Online, people like lists — who knows, maybe people everywhere like lists, either making them or reading them.

Since the goal of writing online is, not surprisingly, to have people read you, the general wisdom is that posts composed of lists to get more readers.  Look at the top articles on aggregating sites like Digg and you’ll always find lists.

That being said, here are my favorite lists of this week.  This list is focused mostly how  to do things better online,  with a bonus two for fun thrown in.  They tend to be a bit inside baseball about creating websites with a sprinkling of Twitter and social media.

The last  two are from cracked.com a site that has made lists an art.  For your amusement.

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Logical Alternative to Multi-tasking — Single-Tasking

March 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

single-tasking-whiteboard

What used to be said with pride, “I can do three things at once — I multi-task”, now seems like a fraud.

The simple fact is that you can only do one thing well at a time and other than actions controlled by the central nervous system or muscle memory like turning on the car blinker  when you get ready to make a turn or jumping rope, all actions need some level of concentration.

Hence the way to concentrate at work is to single-task.  This white-board is making the rounds.  I got it from marketing nirvana who got it from caterina.net.

The methodology this person developed for doing one thing at a time allows you to:

    • send email at any time, but only check it a few times a day on schedule.
    • Focus on only 1 to 3 activities a day.
    • Minimize chat, which I guess means with co-workers and online (which would include Twitter).

    I personally don’t see much hope in trying to be finished at 5:30 pm every day (unless I start at 5:30 am).

    Here’s a refinement of the methodology.  Tell us what you think.

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