Dumbing Down My Twitter Experience

About two weeks ago, a few friends of mine finally gave me the clue to my frustrating question: "How to make Twitter a more enjoyable and user-friendly experience".

Answer: Add a Twitter app to my phone so that I don't get a million texts draining my phone and easily follow my friends who have all but abandoned Facebook and MySpace. So I downloaded ÜberTwitter to my Blackberry Tour and started playing to see what all the fuss was about.

Prior to having ÜberTwitter, Twitter wasn't user-friendly to me because I wouldn't/couldn't sit on a computer all day following and writing tweets. I have too much to do and accomplish to be glued to the PC and only sporadically remembered to text a tweet. Once I downloaded the app, I had to ask a few very silly questions. Things like: "Why are people using a bot to ask me to verify if I am 'real' using a bot?", "What do all the #'s mean?", "Why do 'people' say it matters how many followers I have?" and "What are people actually using Twitter for?"

Lucky for me, I have a lot of real life friends on my Twitter and they helpfully guided me through my questions as I figured it out. Twitter is definitely an app that you have to actually use to figure out how it works. I think that the reason most of my friends who are not on Twitter are not using it, is they don't have the time or patience to figure out how to make 140 characters useful to them and why it's worthwhile and valuable.

So to pay it forward, I will try to answer those questions via things I learned so far and dumb it down so to speak for those who are interested. Let me preface the rest of what I will write by saying that I am in no means a Twitter expert nor do I claim to be, so anything I say that is incorrect cannot be held against me at this point. I'm still a tweet newbie too, but I see potential, which is valuable and worth sharing in this space. ;)

Question #1: "Why are people using a bot to ask me to verify if I am 'real' using a bot?"

Answer: One of the first thing I noticed is there are a lot of bots on Twitter, and I personally am not at all interested in following a 'robot'. I am interested in keeping up with my friends, random and useful information, news articles and updates, inspirational quotes and sayings, having a laugh at some of the hilarious things people do and say, and most importantly using any communication tool that will spread a good and right message to the world. As it turns out, the method I've used is to look at a user's page before I follow them. If I think they have something interesting to say, I add them to my list of "following". If all I see is sales ads and pitches for products and services, I kindly bypass them with no disrespect because I certainly don't want to spend my day looking at business ads all day posted by someone I don't even know.

Question #2: What do all the #'s mean?

Simple answer: They are twitter tags of trending topics.

The tags are a good way of following a trend, especially if you don't necessarily know the people speaking about a topic and want to find more information on that topic of interest. For example, #NowPlaying is a tag I use when tweeting a song I'm currently listening to. #Quotes is a tag for inspirational quotes and sayings. #FF or Follow Friday is a tag for Follow Friday which is a great way to acknowledge the friends & people that you believe are worthy of having other Twitter users follow as well.

The question I'm now pondering and playing with is "How can I create my own trends?" as I integrate my twitter experience with my personal and professional goals and experiences.

A group of my friends at Dog Town Studios set out on a mission this week called "Project 72".

Their mission: Project 72. 4 boys setting out on a mission to create a successful iPhone game in 72 hours from start to finish and document the progress on this site for anyone interested to see.

I find this challenge completely intriguing/noteworthy/awesome (not just because they are my friends) but because they are out there pushing not only their own limits but creating new trends of proving what can be accomplished with technology in such a short time span. They not only launched a successful iPhone app from start to finish in 72 hours, but blogged the experience as well as had live feed streaming their progress while they built the app from scratch... IN 72 HOURS. Amazing. At the end of their challenge, they had about 10 minutes to spare before accomplishing their mission, submitting the app to IPhone for review and popping open the champagne in celebration of their success.

This is a perfect example of when it is a good idea to create a trend so that people can easily track and follow their project; so their Twitter tag became #Project72. This will also be useful as the word spreads as part of their long-term marketing/advertising strategies and as their product launches and people want to continue to follow their progress and projects. So while I'm not going to list all of the different tags and their translations here, I think you should now be able to easily follow trends and tag your own tweets for others to follow.

Question #3: "Why do 'people' say it matters how many followers I have?"

Answer: I don't think it really matters for my current use of Twitter during the learning experience, but I can now obviously see that if you are twittering business information or marketing a product or service, the more followers you have, the more people your message is reaching. I still haven't decided what I would like to "accomplish" with my Twitter so right now this isn't yet relevant to me. Funny enough, I think just by tweeting my random daily experiences and thoughts, I have had over 100 additional followers just in one week.

Important to note, Twitter is a "keyword driven tool". The people you will attract will find you based on what you type into your 140 character tweets. I figured this one out, very simply, because I have a Bachelor's Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology so I have a habit of paying attention to statistics and trends. By mentally noting my tweet topics and the subsequent followers I gained, I noticed clear and consistent patterns. When I typed "eBay" while writing about my eBay experiences, eBay users followed; when I typed a quote that was running through my mind, inspirational users followed; when I typed "health", health users followed... and so on and so forth. So Twitter actually does support a law of attraction theory. You will attract the people on Twitter who have similar interests, hobbies, habits as you, or at least "what you tweet about". Likewise, you can type the name/item/hobby/topic of interest into the search bar and view/follow other users who tweet about these things at your discretion.

Question 4: "What are people actually using Twitter for?"

Answer: EVERYTHING! :)

I am only a little over a week into really testing and using Twitter but I can tell you for certain already that people are tweeting about everything and anything we can think of. With a little creative thought, by putting focused effort into your Twitter Topics and by being REAL, Twitter is an extremely useful social media tool to spread news and information on any topic you choose.

I'm still pondering what message I'd like to send to the world in a public domain. I have some ideas, but once I nail it down and feel confident that it's the "RIGHT" message, I will use it for these purposes as well. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the Twitter experience as of now. My advice would be that the best way of learning Twitter is by actually doing it, playing with it, making mistakes and continuing forward. This is my advice for most things, but definitely applies to tweeting.

I must also note that I am not thrilled with the brevity of message content. I don't like spelling with errors and am not thrilled that Twitter is forcing me to write short-hand and/or grammatically incorrect words/sentences. Most of the time, I just need more than 140 characters to clearly and accurately portray a worthwhile thought. I'm making effort nevertheless to go with the flow on this topic.

Lastly, my favorite day of Twitter experience so far was Friday for #FF Follow Friday. It was/is so fun to acknowledge the people I know and respect as well as my new friends who are amazing and have good messages to share. That's worth tweeting about.

Social Networking Sites: The Lists ~ By Vanessa Gibson

Social Networking Sites are becoming increasingly popular as a way to maintain contact with coworkers, classmates and friends via the internet. These online social networking sites allow you the opportunity to stay in contact with people you have interacted with in the workplace, at school as well as socially.

Throughout my extensive career focusing on hiring individuals who are highly credentialed and qualified in their area of expertise, the consistent observation I have made when working with individuals who have graduated from top-rated colleges, is that the students who graduated from schools that placed the most emphasis on maintaining effective alumni programs and encouraging alumni networking events have also been given the greatest potential of utilizing their college network to help them succeed as they progressed in their career path, whether it be an employee referral for an open position at their current employer, providing a reference for employment, as well as referring a new business development opportunity to their fellow alumni.

With the advent of online social networking sites, anyone now has the same opportunities that some of the leading schools in the country have been able to create for their students and alumni leading to additional possibility for success. These sites are user friendly, fun and have the beneficial effect of maintaining contact with the people you have built relationships with throughout your education and career as well as giving members the opportunity to also make new contacts.

Maintaining communication with your previous colleagues as well as members and alumni of schools you have attended can lead to potential career advancing opportunities. Utilizing these networking sites may lead to a referral for a new job opportunity. You can give or receive employment recommendations as well. They also have the added benefit of allowing you to easily staying in touch with people you may not otherwise have been able to maintain contact with due to various life circumstances such as relocating, changing jobs or career path, etc.

It is important to note that signing up for and maintaining interaction on these sites does not need to be time-consuming. Even dedicating 15 minutes a month to interacting on your preferred social networking site is enough time to induce positive results. As long as used responsibly, there are invaluable benefits of networking online to positively impact your career progression.

Here is a list of a few social networking sites that I would recommend. Do not feel obligated to sign up for all of them. Even utilizing one or two that are popular in your area or industry can be useful.


 LinkedIn is an online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries. Visit their website at: http://www.linkedin.com.

 Facebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges. Visit their website at: http://www.facebook.com.

 Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Visit their website at: http://twitter.com.

 Classmates.com’s online social networking Web sites enable users to locate and interact with acquaintances from high school, college, work and the military. Visit their website at: http://www.classmates.com.

 MySpace is an international site that offers email, a forum, communities, videos and weblog space. Visit their website at: http://www.myspace.com.

 Bebo is a social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment. Visit their website at: http://www.bebo.com.

For a list of additional social networking sites, Wikipedia offers an updated list of current social networking sites at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

It is important when signing up for any of the various networking sites available, that you consider creating an effective and marketable online brand. For more information on maximizing your online brand, please see my article entitled “Maximizing Your Online Brand”.

Maximizing Your Online Brand ~ By Vanessa Gibson

Social Networking Sites are becoming increasingly popular as a way to maintain contact with coworkers, classmates and friends. It is important when signing up for any of the various networking sites available, that you consider creating an effective and marketable online brand. Recruiters and companies are relying more and more on search engines and networking sites to source candidates as well as to find relevant information about potential candidates to make corporate decisions about who they will decide to interview and ultimately hire. It is crucial that you know what your online brand says about you and that your online brand is a reflection of how you want to be perceived in the workplace. In order to effectively achieve this, there are several steps you can take to create an effective online brand. Here are a few tips and tricks when creating your online brand:

 Google your name. Be aware of what your online brand says about you.
 Sign up for relevant networking sites to your industry.
 Maximize your online potential by taking the time to write relevant information regarding yourself including the companies you have worked for, positions you have held, responsibilities you have had, as well as any awards or recognition you have received and posting the information on various sites.
 If you feel you do not have time to write different versions for several sites, create the content once and copy and paste it to the relevant sites to your industry and position.
 Be conscientious and keep it clean. Never put information online that could potentially be damaging to your reputation or career.
 Reach out and keep in contact with members of your network. Your network can help ease your way through your career path by providing future job possibilities, employee referrals as well as by providing reference checks for future employment.
 Buy your domain name and use it as an effective marketing tool.
 Create a blog. Write articles and post on forums that are relevant to your industry and experience.
 In order to maximize your search optimization potential, always use your full name whenever possible when writing articles online or as your screen name.
 Track your sites and blog. For example, Google Analytics offers a tool to track relevant information to visits your site that can be utilized for research, relevance and analysis.
 Sign up for Google Alerts using various forms of your name including any nicknames or screen names you may use as well as the names of relevant people and companies in your industry so that you always have the latest relevant information posted regarding yourself as well as information regarding your industry, peers and competition.
 Keep your information current and relevant to your career goals and ambitions.

Use technology to your advantage. For more information on relevant networking sites to research or sign up for, please see my article entitled “Social Networking Sites: The Lists”.