In Praise of Twitter

I'll bet you never thought you'd hear me say that, did you?

When I first signed up with Twitter, I felt totally overwhelmed by the volume and speed of the 'tweets'. But here I am, just a few weeks later, beginning to enjoy Twitter to the extent that I would actually miss it if it were unavailable!

So what has changed my mind? It boils down to a couple of decisions I made during the few days that I was away from my computer, dealing with my printer problems.

Firstly, I decided to be a lot more selective about following people. It was the sheer volume of incoming tweets that had been overwhelming me so I decided to begin very small, following and being followed by more or less only people I knew outside of the Twitter setting.

Then I gradually, very gradually, began to follow some of the people who were following me, but only after having a good look through their tweets and deciding that they were of genuine interest to me.

I also took the bold step of 'unfollowing' a few people - and the sky hasn't fallen in! There were a few people I was following because we appeared to have common interests but I later realised that they were using Twitter simply to keep in touch with one another, with no wish to have others join the conversation, a kind of free text-messaging service - the only difference being that their conversation was made public to the whole tweeting world! It left me feeling like an eavesdropper!

And then there were a few who constantly sent out slight variations of the same message of advice - a message that I strongly disagreed with. So off they were sent into Twitter-Outer-Darkness!

This done, I began to feel that I, rather than Twitter, was in the driving seat, and I started to become aware of its benefits:

• Twitter is a good way to 'touch base' with people when there's no time for a full-length email.
• Through Twitter, I was able to find instant advice and help with the practical problems I was having with my printer.
• Twitter has introduced me to some fascinating people and their blogs that I would probably have never come across in any other way!
• Twitter, I have discovered, can provide a rich source of information if you make sure you follow people who are likely to be experts in your field of interest.

Whether Twitter is actually helping me to promote my online stores remains to be seen - they say it takes time. But I don't suppose it can really do any harm to tweet links to my products and blogs as well as participating in conversations. As one 'tweeter' commented the other day; most people on Twitter are promoting something. I try to spread out my promotional tweets across the whole day and evening, for the sake of my followers as I find that one of the most irritating things about Twitter are the large batches of tweets from the same person that arrive 'en masse'. It takes time and attention to weed my way through them, sifting out the ones I wouldn't want to miss from amongst those that don't seem at all relevant or interesting.  And time and attention are in rather short supply for me, as I would imagine they are for many of us!

But maybe these 'mass tweeters' have a very limited time-frame in which to 'tweet', unlike those of us who are on and off our computers for most of waking hours! Maybe they are the people who could make use of automated tweeting that is scheduled to distribute one's tweets at intervals rather than all at once. The argument against scheduling tweets in this way is that they lose their 'personal touch'. But often there doesn't seem to be any hint of a 'personal touch' in any case!

So what are the downsides to Twitter?

The most obvious one is that it can gobble up enormous amounts of time as it leads you ever further down the highways and byways of the internet, in search of a definitive answer to a pressing question. But that is true of all aspects of the World Wide Web and the only solution that I know of is be extremely self-disciplined and to keep an eye on the clock!

Another hazard is that having so much and such varied information thrust in front of one's eyes in such a short space of time can cause confusion! Recently another artist posted a link to a webpage with a recommendation that every artist should take note. When I opened the webpage, I couldn't see its relevance so I sent a message to the person who had recommended it, asking what its relevance was. Some time later, I received a message saying that he didn't understand my question. By which time I had completely forgotten what the webpage was all about! (And that is the condensed version of the story, which actually meandered on over several days!)

All in all, I would highly recommend Twitter as a promotional tool and for personal use - it makes facebook seem sluggish and, frankly, hard work! But start small - it's the quality of your followers, rather than the quantity, that matters. Be picky about who you choose to follow and don't let it take up more time than you can genuinely spare!

What has been your experience of Twitter? And do you have any tips for those considering opening a Twitter account?

Here is some further reading on the subject of Twitter, all gleaned from the tweets of people I've been following:

• Jeff Bullas with some facts and figures about the growth of Twitter.
• Jeff Bullas again - blogging and Twitter

And this one is just for fun!

Twitter - More Questions than Answers!

I hope it's clear from my title that if you are looking for advice on how to use Twitter to maximum advantage, you probably won't find it here. What you will find are more questions than answers.

A few weeks ago I signed up to Twitter, something I'd instinctively resisted until I was advised that it was a sure-fire way to get sales for the products in my online stores. Opening an account was very quick and straightforward compared to my experience of other social networking sites but what followed was anything but 'straightforward'!

First there were the unfamiliar terminology and concepts - again! - such as 'retweet', 'lists' and 'trending' (what are we doing to our language!) and odd little conventions like the use of @ and #, FF and RT.  Add to that the speed of light with which everything happens, so that the 'tweets' I might have wanted to actually explore disappeared before my eyes as floods of new ones came pouring into my homepage, I felt confused and, before long, quite overwhelmed. But those are practicalities which I can adjust to, just as I've had to with facebook and blogging.

On reflection, I think what has most bothered me is that I'm not altogether clear in my mind about the purpose and function of Twitter. It calls itself a social networking site, one of the newer social media, so its purpose is clearly putting people in touch with one another quickly and easily. But is it? There are articles and blogs that I've read that claim that Twitter is really a search engine in disguise, not a social networking site at all, and what's more, it's the fastest growing search engine - though it still has a long way to go to catch up with Google.

So which is it - a Search Engine or a Social Networking Site? Is it possible for it to be either - or both! - according to what its users want from it? And more importantly, can it really help me with my Zazzle sales and if so, how can I make it work for me?

Seth Godin, the US entrepreneur behind Squidoo Lenses, doesn't seem any more enthusiastic about Twitter as a marketing tool than he is about it as a social networking opportunity.

I agree that it's rather a vain hope to build real relationships using messages limited to 140 characters. And one of the drawbacks of Twitter for short messages, as compared to other similar media, such as Messenger, facebook and even Skype, is that you can't see when the person you're chatting to goes offline (unless they make a point of saying that they're leaving!) This hardly makes for a natural ebb and flow of conversation!

The other drawback, that some may see as a benefit, I suppose, is that, by default, the 'tweets' are available for others to read. The reams of, to me, meaningless @soandso tweets that pour into my homepage are one of the things that makes the whole Twitter experience somewhat irritating and at times, bewildering, to me.

So why not just use email to build relationships? It's free, quick and easy - not as quick as a 'tweet' of course, but at least in an email, you get the chance to express yourself naturally and genuinely and in a way  appropriate to the recipient!

But then again, is it really necessary to 'build a relationship' with a potential customer in order to 'convert' or otherwise persuade that person to buy what we're trying to sell them? If you are selling cars or computers or any sort of major purchase, especially if after-sales service is part of the deal, I would say 'yes, it probably is'. It's always encouraging to sense that we can trust the person who is selling us an expensive item. One of the assistants in the office supplies shop that I frequent regularly, is very persistent in trying to sell me expensive equipment, such as printers, without even finding out first what my specific needs are. So I don't trust him and it's unlikely I'd buy any of the things he suggests that I need! But greeting cards? Or T-shirts, or mousepads - I don't think so! For the most part the only thing I know about the people who have bought my greeting cards and other products through my online stores, is where they come from, information supplied by the online stores. A couple of friends have bought my greeting cards to give me a start but on the whole, I wouldn't want to mix friendship with business. I'm pretty sure that in most cases, I'd lose friends that way, without gaining any sales!

So if Twitter isn't really about building relationships, and if some kinds of sales don't necessitate much of a relationship between buyer and seller, maybe its usefulness lies mostly in the fact that Google picks up the tweets and makes them widely available?. Maybe that's why some Twitterers are simply tweeting their 'products' en masse, not caring whether their followers even bother to click on the links to them, as long as they get them 'out there' as fodder for the search engines? In that case it makes sense to acquire as huge a 'following' as possible but that has nothing to do with 'relationships', social or otherwise!

Having mercilessly picked Twitter to pieces, I should just add that I have found an upside! For me it's been a good source of interesting articles and blogs, mostly, but not entirely, on the subject of Search Engine Optimisation. If only they were easier to find amidst the stream of irrelevant other stuff'!

I'm wondering as I write this, is there a collective noun for 'tweets' to replace the expressions, 'flood of tweets', or 'stream of tweets' that I've used? A 'barrage of tweets' or a 'spate of  tweets' come to mind but my best suggestion would probably be, 'a babble of tweets', from the 15th Century meaning, 'to repeat oneself incoherently, speak foolishly' - maybe you can come up with something even more appropriate!

Or maybe I should 'tweet' that question to the Twitterworld? It's probably no less interesting than tweeting about the weather and my progress on cleaning my house!


'Twittering' chicadees courtesy of Country Mouse Studio's Greeting Card Universe Store. Click on the images to see the greeting cards in greater detail and from there you can browse Carole's many other lovely wildlife paintings as greeting cards.