Last week, I did an interview with Trilby Jeeves about the basics of Twitter, which is the micro-blogging site that is rapidly taking over the social networking world. Since then, I have come across tons and tons of really great resources on Twitter, and wanted to share them.
First off, though, I feel like I am finally starting to get the hang of this Twitter thing. Funny, because the only thing I really have to compare it to is Facebook, which I immediately and violently took to. But I’ve been on Twitter for about 5-6 months, now, and I feel like I am just getting the hang of it, or, as Trilby says, discovering my “Twitter Voice.”
My experience of Twitter is that it is much more about resource sharing and less about your personal stuff, which Facebook is so good at. There are lots and lots and lots of people on Facebook who just use it for social networking with their friends and family. Some are using it for business as well, but on Twitter, at the end of the day, I think pretty much everyone is on there for business. Some are bloggers, trying to increase traffic to their site, some are out-and-out businesses, but there are far less posts that read like Facebook status lines on Twitter, I think.
I also think that Twitter is kind of like a tease. For example, I recently twittered about a show I was working on, The Thing About Men. Instead of saying “Going to the opening of a new show, The Thing About Men, (URL),” I wrote “Here’s the thing about men: (URL).” Twitter posts work best when they don’t (as mom always said) give away the cow. A sense of humour helps, too.
So I promised you some resources, right? Okay, here ya go: I’ll repost the few links that I included with the original blog post.
Twellow: is a Twitter search directory.
The Twitter Handbook is a free, downloadable resource for Twitter users.
David Tinney has an excellent blog article called The ABC’s of Using Twitter Effectively. He talks about things like automatic versus self-written welcome messages, the protocol of using your photo, and what percentage of personal tweets to business you should use.
Twitter Grader is a tool to let you know how successful you are as a Twitterer. It measures how many followers you have, how many people you follow, and how many posts a day you do. Then it somehow puts that together in a score out of 100. Interesting, but could be depressing.
Mr. Tweet billed “your personal networking assistant”, Mr Tweet can help you to find people you should be following that are beyond your current network, or figure out which of your followers you should be following back. Very cool.
Tweet Later: is productivity tools for busy Tweeple. It includes, among other things, a way to send your new followers an automatic welcome message.
Tweet Deck: “aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.”
Go forth and Tweet…