by Sean Platt – a freelance writer who blogs about creativity and passion at Collective Inkwell. Follow him @writerdad.
Twitter has no doubt altered the entire landscape of blogging. It’s accessibility, immediacy, and wide availability to anyone with a working Internet connection have made it the fastest thriving online application ever, currently growing at twice the speed of Facebook.
I myself was late to the Twitter party. Though I did have an account, I rarely used it until recently, vastly preferring the broader canvas my own blog provided. It wasn’t until I finally realized the true benefit of what Twitter offered that I fully embraced its almost limitless possibility.
What does Twitter offer above all else? Twitter allows you to show a more immediate version of yourself.
When I am drafting a post to be later published on my own site, I can take all the time I need to sand the rough edges and make my prose and personality glow. This is not true with Twitter. Whenever I am truly engaged in Twitter, I am responding to information at the speed in which it appears. I have 140 characters to make my thoughts count, and a never ending stream of information to first access and then act upon.
How I respond to what is in front of me says a lot about my personality. It is the immediacy of Twitter that allows me to reveal a more sincere slice of myself. Not only am I able to display my random thoughts, likes, and dislikes, while sharing my favorite links and personalities with a select group of followers, I am also swimming in a wide stream of never ending conversation where I can chime in at any time and join an occasional exchange as fast as my fingers will fly.
Once I clued into this essential fact of Twitter, I was also instantly plugged into the application’s deepest value.
Here’s what I learned:
Twitter is the place to be my online me at my most unguarded. My blogs are a place to follow a more carefully considered set of rules. Twitter is a place for me to fly as if by instinct. The less I think, the more genuine I will be. I prefer my banter to be immediate and my exchanges swift.
Conversation is key. Whether or not to follow someone is often a split second decision. After being alerted to their follow, a quick click on their profile will tell me enough to prompt my instincts. If the person isn’t a spammer (they cannot mention a free laptop anywhere in their stream) with interesting things to say, a follow is almost a sure thing. However, conversation is important and if a couple of weeks pass without engagement I will probably unfollow. This is the only way to make sure everyone in my stream gets my best attention.
Twitter is a place to be generous. Because of the nature of my primary blog, links have always been a bit hard to hand out. This has been a source of guilt for me as I often wish to reward my loyal readers in any way I can. Twitter is different. Because of the construct of the community, passing valuable information is part of the game. By associating with those who traffic in quality, I am helping those I follow while providing value to those who follow me.
Twitter might now be the most valuable tool in the blogger’s toolbox. Wield it with consideration and it could easily move your blogging to a whole new playground.
@lenalindstrom12
Fantastic
Really agree, well written post as well!
On a note, this could work as a disadvantage for those we let quite a negative side through.
Too often recently have I seen people … well … rant on a daily basis – and this is a side which I had never seen before from reading blog posts and articles.
@ChrisClayton
im actualy really careful what i tweet now, as you can not only show the best side of your self, but the worst side of yourself (everyone has a bad side) too.
“I am helping those I follow while providing value to those who follow me.” A succinct way to explain how to be your best on Twitter.
@Melissacw
Love that point
>Twitter is a place to be generous
We can pour our hearts out in generosity to our fellow men – that is truly liberating Peeps!
@cvharquail
Sean, I agree with you–
Twitter does offer us a chance to discover who we are, as we ‘tweet’ without much wordsmithing between the thought and the expression. While it can be a little scary to let it all come out relatively less filtered, it can also be exhilarating.
There are other elements of the Twittering process that facilitate self-discovery, such as the way that we surround ourselves with folks that we follow. To the degree that we choose to follow folks with certain values, attitudes, modes of expression and knowledge of us, we can use Twitter (in part) to help lead us towards the persons we want to be.
I wrote about this at http://www.AuthenticOrganizations.com Tweet Yourself Like The Person You Want To Be. I’d love your thoughts on this idea… txs
@ramiromarques
Great post. I agree with all you have said. However, in Portugal, Twitter is growing not so fast.
@techvenkat
Yes that’s true Twitter is most valuable tool in the bloggers Toolbox,I my self found quite knowldege as headlines of latest news first comes from Twitter and I will follow those who will have some updates.
@philipnowak
I enjoyed reading your post as I tend to agree with all of your points. I follow five basic rules:
1) Interesting Tweets. I tweet anything that I find interesting. Articles, tweets, quotes and random thoughts are all fair game for a tweet. I try to put my two cents into each and every one of my tweets, but sometimes the 140 character limit prevents me from doing that.
2) Personal Tweets. I post personal update tweets from time to time as I want to captivate my followers and build a personal connection with them. Otherwise, my followers may think that I employ the use of a robot to select articles to send out. That’s why it is important to only tweet articles that you like and try to comment on them.
3) No Reciprocation. I do NOT reciprocate when someone follows me. If I find you interesting, then I will follow you. Don’t be offended or take it personally if I choose not to follow you back, at least initially. This also helps me cut down on spammers as they usually unfollow me once they get annoyed that I didn’t follow them.
4) I am “noisy.” I send out a lot of tweets on any given day, especially in the morning and in the evening. If you do not enjoy following me anymore, then unfollow me. No problem. I like to think that everything I tweet, regardless of how random or frequent, is of interest or value to somebody.
5) Communicate. I respond, in time, to all people who reply or send a direct message to me. Even if your tweet is negative, I will give you the courtesy of a response. This helps to build a relationship with your followers as they will view you as empathetic and sincere. I have also been trying to thank everyone that follows me as I truly am thankful that someone finds me interesting.
I may not have a huge following, but I do know that the followers that I do have actually care about the things that I tweet about. Loyal followers will support your future endeavors and will offer advice to you when you ask for it. In my opinion, this is what Twitter should be all about.
-Philip Nowak
Is Twitter based in China?
I must conclude it is after what I’ve been through.
I got my account suspended. Why you ask? Because I criticized another user, because I had an opinion. What ensued was this person I criticized asking his thousands of followers to accuse my account of spam (falsely accuse). “Just send a message @spam with the name of his account” he told his followers, he added “If you do this for me, I’ll add you to my user following”. So far it’s clear I was dealing with a psycho but that’s ok, he’s free to be one. What mattered to me was getting Twitter to realize it did a mistake, the accusations were false and this was just a way to shut me up, a sort of bullying.
By then I was already quite disappointed with the fact that Twitter suspends accounts automatically. I don’t know what the exact number is but if they receive a certain amount of complaints about an account, they automatically suspend it and only later check if they did the right thing.
The Twitter sentence came: “In this case “impersonation” is the issue. Impersonation is against our terms of service unless it’s parody. The standard for defining parody is, “Would a reasonable person be aware that it’s a joke.””
Yes a reasonable person would, there’s hundreds or thousands of “parody” accounts, people get it, they’re reasonable but I guess Twitter considers their users dumb.
The only thing I could do in this situation was to create another account. Take in count every rule and it’s subjectivity so they couldn’t accuse me of anything. I did, but I continued sharing my opinions so the psycho (edit: Username removed. No need to bring your battle here, thankyouverymuch. Share your story, yes. Bash another here, no.) repeated is scheme and guess what, a few hours later my account had been suspended. I couldn’t wait to hear what Twitter had to say. They deleted my first two requests for an explanation, what rule did I brake was my insisting question. Finally they replied:
“You created an account. It violated our terms of service. It was suspended. You created another account. It, too, violated our terms of service; it also violated our terms of service by being created.
You will not be reinstated on any account; if you create additional accounts, those will also be suspended.”
Wow! Did they just say that? I had to read it a couple of times to make sure. Democracy out of the window and that’s that. If you can turn your followers against someone with fewer followers, they go straight out of the window like it happened to me, no questions asked.
@webfusion5
I agree. I didn’t really get into all of the social networks until I wanted to market my blog. I did not immediately see the benefit of using twitter. My first twitter post was “What is the point?” and it stayed on my account for months. Even being a web developer I just didn’t get it. Then I had my “Ah-Hah!” moment and everything clicked into place.
~ Jason Cochran :: WebFusion5
@writerdad
Lena: Thanks for the compliment! Yes, I agree, but a disadvantage for the followed can be an advantage for the follower. If we see another side of a person that we aren’t too fond of, it can be rather illuminating. If every tweet in the stream truly matters then being armed with the best information is a tremendous way to take our tweeting to the top.
Chris: Great rule of thumb: you should never tweet anything you wouldn’t want Googled.
Lori: Hiya, Lori! Thanks. I’m not always so succinct.
Melissa: Twitter is a place to be generous. Arriving at this conclusion has been a fantastic thing for my overall Twitter experience.
CV: I agree with all you’re saying. I’ll be by to check out your post a little later. Thank you for the inclusion.
Ramiro: Just give it time. Eventually we might be renaming the planet to TweetEarth.
Philip: Those are fantastic rules Philip. Hard to disagree with a single one.
@thewriterslife
Great post! I love twitter. I’m late to the bandwagon myself but am finding out more and more cool things you can do with it. I don’t know how I lived without it!
@johnhaydon
Sean,
You made me realize something about Twitter: What sets it apart from most social media sites is the “culture of giving”.
Like you, I am limited by how generous I can be on my own blog (links, mentions, kudos…), but with Twitter, almost all of my posts are in consideration of folks I love and folks who follow me.
Lately, I’ve been using Facebook and Posterous in ways that promote great content I’ve found, and less about my own blog.
Thanks!
John
@docnicole
Great tip! I like the idea of helping promote people while preserving your backlinks. Thanks for the article.
@ZuDfunck
Your singing my tune
I feel very similar about the immediacy that Twitter has
It’s a special time in the evolution of Blogging
Twitter, its’ format, its’ members, are special
We are all fortunate to be engaged in it
We are in for a hell of a ride!
ZuD
@writerdad
Dorothy: Thanks, Dorothy. I have to admit I’m probably better off for being late to the party on this one. There’s so much to learn from the early experience of others, so long as we’re willing to pay attention. If I’d started any earlier I wouldn’t have had fantastic resources such as TwiTip at my disposal either.
John: Hi there John! My pleasure. It’s true. I’ve even wanted to start another blog, just as a way to promote people who create content I enjoy, but that’s rather unnecessary now that I’m running around on Twitter. It does seem to make Blogopolis go round these days.
Dr. Nicole: Well said, Nicole. Helping people while preserving backlinks indeed.
ZuDfunck: Yes we are. I can’t wait to see where it takes us.
@hectorhenry17
Twitter its great option for all kaind of companies and in my case i would say specially blogs. becuase its another way to make they notice you.
Good pots