Nancy Giles is a regular opinion contributor to CBS Sunday Morning. Normally she has very witty, funny opinionated pieces as part of the show. This past week however I was disappointed. My disappointment was not in that she was taking a jab at Twitter…there are definitely ways to take clever jabs at Twitter and the people who use it, but Nancy Giles didn’t take that route. My disappointment was that she clearly didn’t understand what makes Twitter so powerful and obviously had not used it. Here’s a link to her opinion on YouTube:
Her usual quick and witty opinion piece was about as blunt as a rubber mallet. Here’s the big point you are missing Nancy:
The Monday morning after this aired I went to an event (aka a TweetUp) organized by @AaronStrout in Arlington MA at a little coffee shop called Jam N’ Java at 8AM. I drove an hour in for this event. There were over 75 people who attended this event…all organized through Twitter. Yes Twitter is online but many people in the Twitter community actually like to get together at events as small as this or as large as SXSW. Here’s a picture of @JimStorer @ayemoah @alexa @esangenito and @AaronStrout at the event. 
Some people were networking for their business, some were meeting new people socially, some were continuing conversations they had started online. A few attendees were recently laid off and were there looking for potential employment opportunities or simply just for moral support and great conversation. The conversations were about everything from potential job opportunities in the current economy for a few to my conversation with @srdill about the finer points of vegetarianism.
Yes I understand that’s what the Twitter website says but if you actually take a minute to engage the community on Twitter you’d learn it’s less about the mundane “What you are doing?” and more about “What interesting article did you read?” or “Do you think the bailout plan will actually delay economic recovery?” Maybe even helping someone with a flat bicycle tire find a bike shop.
So Nancy Giles while your usual opinion pieces are spot on, this one…frankly was a dud. If you’d learned what Twitter is all about you’d know it’s about making connections, about conversation, it’s about engagement and most of all…it’s about community.
There is nothing better to me than getting to meet many of the people I have conversations with online in person. Social Media Jungle event organized by Jeff Pulver was no exception. There were around 120 or so attendees and he was able to assemble some of the areas best social media thought leaders to lead some amazing discussions. Here are a few quick observations of mine from various speakers at the event:
The organizer of the event kicked it off and had some great thoughts about connecting with people as people…social media isn’t a numbers game although that is how some people would make it out to be. He also assesses his relationships online regularly and has recently removed around 3,000 “friends” from his Facebook profile. He regularly assesses those that he is connected to – do they engage in conversation? Have they brought something to the relationship in the past year? If the answer is no, then he removes them.This example was to stress his point that it’s all about building relationships and you have a “social” responsibility to define yourself as a person. People don’t interact with brands – they interact with the people behind those brands. Connect with people AS people. So being vulnerable is the secret to success in social media.
Another interesting prediction Jeff brought up – He believes in less than 18 months Twitter will be sold for between 2-4 billion to either Google or Microsoft. We shall see…
In C.C. Chapman’s presentation he built upon Jeff’s presentation focus by suggesting that you should disregard quantity of followers, friends, etc. and just focus on building trust. “Don’t forget your human. Be yourself.”
Raised some interesting questions about Twitter becoming more than it is. Will it have accounts you have to pay to follow? Will there be automated feeds to tell soft drink distributors to restock a vending machine? Automated traffic updates?
Laura talked about getting social media involved with charities such as WellWishes because she was passionate about clean water. She also brought up Twestival which hosted over 200 simultaneous TweetUps to raise money for clean water projects. The main thing she stressed is that the influencer is the idea and not the person behind it.
Justin talked about how he is part owner of Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse a steak house in Northampton MA and how he has cut their traditional ad revenues by up to 90% and had 12 consecutive months of increasing revenue – all because of social media. He also shared an acronym he made up: HELP which stands for “Hustle, Engagement, Learning and Passion.” He also added “S” for “Strategy” which is how social media “HELPS” his business continue to grow.
Chris is a stats geek which I love (being one myself). His whole topic was based around “what numbers matter?” and it comes down to basic grammar the verb. Verbs carry the action in a sentence. What measurables in your statistics have verbs? You just need to define what actions are in your statistics to find what your truly valuable statistics are.
Stephen started by talking about the misconception that people feel they don’t have the time for social media. He then quoted Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting (who spoke earlier) as part of his presentation that “Twitter is Google Juice”. He stressed the importance of “benchmarking” on Google to measure the effectiveness of using Twitter. Stephen was competing on Twitter with a famous Confederate General who also had the same name as he did (having a famous horse jockey who won the Kentucky Derby I could empathize with his struggle). He stressed that rather than fall into the misconception that social media was a time waster, you should realize that the real power and reason behind using social media is the technology of search.
Leslie had a great presentation about generational engagement in social media. Her greatest point was the need for real mentoring. For “Gen Yers” to help the “baby boomers” embrace the possibilities of social media and the tools that are available as well as the “baby boomers” to help the “Gen Yers” to understand concepts and strategies they may not have learned growing up completely in a digital world.
Matthew talked about how social media in general is a noisy place to have your discussion but that video helps to change that because people use video to change their mood. He also had stats (again I’m an admitted stats geek) that 86% of people use video to change their emotional state. It just goes to show how an effectively produced video can reach your audience by utilizing emotional triggers.
Thanks also go to Joe Cascio, Doug Levin, Jason Jacobs, Leah Busque, Steve Garfield, Alex Chriss (also the event’s host from Intuit), Maria Thurrell and Mike Langford for sparking some other great conversations not mentioned here and to Jeff Pulver for putting on a great event!
With nearly 10,000 people joining Twitter on a daily basis, people find it useful for connecting with friends, growing their business network and for learning about interesting blog articles, content, websites, applications and tools available online. I joined Twitter almost a year ago and it is an incredibly useful tool. I have developed some great new relationships, expanded my business reach, and discovered great articles and websites that people have shared with me.
I do find that many people who I talk to about Twitter find it confusing to get started or intimidating. So while there are many different blog posts and articles about how to get started on Twitter, I figured I would add my own to the catalog with my own unique perspective and set of tools I use to get the most value out of Twitter. Hopefully at least one person out there will find this helpful and if so…it has served it’s purpose.
Create your account: OK…this may sound ridiculous but the first step is of course to go to twitter.com. When selecting a username, I would recommend you create a user name that is your FirstnameLastname. If that isn’t available do not add any dashes or underscores as many Twitter users utilize mobile devices and you have to do some serious finger gymnastics to get those characters in. In this article where I refer to a generic user name I will use my own Twitter user name of “@EricGuerin” as the example.
COMPLETELY fill out your profile: You’d be surprised how many people don’t include a photo, fill out the bio, etc. This is how you are found so be as complete as possible. Add a photograph of yourself that shows your face – your twitter account is your personal brand. I don’t follow anyone who does not have a photo of themselves. Include a link to your blog or…if you own your own company…include a link to your company website.
Start Tweeting: The reason you want to start posting tweets before you try to follow others is because you want to highlight your interests via these tweets. Share your most recent blog posts, links to your latest video, etc. Even though Twitter asks “What are you doing?” it’s more about “What are you reading?”, “What video did you watch?” or “What did you find online?” I would advise against posting tweets such as “I am so tired”, “I am eating dinner”, etc. – you can do this once in a while, but the only way you will get any value out of Twitter is by fostering conversations with other people.
Look for friends: Have some friends already using Twitter? Great! Connect with them using the Find People On Twitter Tool. This can also be a great way to find people to follow, look at who your friends are following and start by connecting with them.
Start following others: Use search.twitter.com and search for people who have posted tweets in areas of your interests. Let’s say you really like talking about the Red Sox…you can do a search for “Red Sox” and the people that are having those conversations will show up for you to connect with them. Click the “Follow” button below their photos. Some of them will follow you back and some of them won’t. Don’t take it personally if some of them don’t.
or don’t follow others: Maybe you aren’t necessarily looking to connect by “following” people at random, maybe you’d rather just hop in and out of conversations that interest you? Fair enough. You’ll want to check out Tweetworks. Tweetworks offers threaded conversations in groups within Twitter…think of it like a chat room on steroids. Best of all it forwards your tweets from Tweetworks into the much larger stream of conversations going on with Twitter so if you want to talk about “Video Blogging” maybe someone will do a search and find you on Tweetworks or will follow you by finding that tweet. Either way Tweetworks is probably one of the easiest and fastest ways to get started with Twitter.
Get the right tools: It’s pretty easy to get a headache trying to stay on top of all your connections tweets and conversations. To make Twitter easier to follow you’ll want to get yourself set up with the right tools. The two best are Tweetdeck and Twhirl. Both run on the Adobe Air platform and are super simple to install. The benefit is they make receiving and replying to direct messages, replies and having conversations much easier than trying to follow on Twitter. There are also apps for the iPhone and Blackberry which make mobile tweeting much easier.
Start the conversation: If someone tweets a question (i.e. What video sharing site gets the most traffic?) and this is a question you want to answer…you want to reply to this person. So you would say:
@EricGuerin YouTube receives the most traffic of all video sharing sites
Again @EricGuerin would be replaced with the name of the person whose tweet you are replying to. In Twhirl you can simply rollover their photo and in the upper left of the photo the “@” symbol will pop up making sending a reply much easier.
Good Karma: Let’s say someone you follow tweeted a really great article or video and you want to share it with others…Retweet them. All you need to do on Twitter is add “RT @EricGuerin“ and their tweet – where @EricGuerin is replaced with the name of the person whose tweet you are retweeting or in Twhirl, roll over their photo and click on the double arrows in the lower right and Twhirl will automatically load that tweet into your typing area with the RT and user name already added. For example, if you want to retweet one of my posts, it would look like.
RT @EricGuerin Blog post: “Helping E-Commerce with Video” a look at the recent eMarketer article with my thoughts http://is.gd/iuBV
Most of all have fun: You are new to Twitter don’t take it too seriously. Don’t obsess about how many followers you have, don’t worry if someone stops following you, don’t worry about the significance of your 100th or your 10,000th tweet (believe it or not some people do). It’s all about the quality of the conversations you are having and whether it is worthwhile to you…not anybody else.
Getting started is the most difficult part, but once you have started it’s pretty easy. You’ll learn what you like and don’t like and what works best for you. after that you will learn as you go and figure out how to use Twitter the way it works best for you.
So what do you think? Did I leave anything out? Anything that needs clarification? Let me know in the comments below or ask me on Twitter by replying to @EricGuerin.
