Week 3: Twitter

Today I took the plunge which I thought I would never take and joined Twitter and may I say only for the sake of completing this assignment. After signing up it took me a while to work out how to use twitter and I found it difficult to find people from class that I could follow. Eventually after reading some help files on the different ways to use Twitter, I was able to locate people from class and IKM groups which I could follow.

I began to research for some interesting uses of Twitter and how it can be used amongst an organisation to assist its clients and until actually finding some really interesting information I didn’t realise that it had so much capabilities and could be used for so many different things. I found an interesting article titled ‘17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners’ which can be found at http://www.doshdosh.com/ways-you-can-use-twitter/ which like its title describes 17 ways Twitter can be used. Here are those 17 ways below, but there is also some other interesting information on the site so don’t hesitate to check it out.

1. Personal Branding. Twitter is a social media platform you can use to build your personal brand. It has the primary benefit of developing a casual persona and establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable. As Twitter adoption increases, new users will be drawn towards well established Twitter personas.

2. Get Feedback. Need an alternative perspective on how a website looks or the right course of action to take? Blast out a message asking for advice and you’ll receive replies from other users. This collective intelligence can be used as fodder for articles or projects.

3. Hire People. Need a good logo designer, marketer or programmer? Send out a message asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.

4. Direct traffic. Twitter can be used to get traffic to your websites or the sites of friends. If you ask your friends to tweet about it, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up. There is a viral nature to all types of news, even on a site like Twitter.

5. Read News. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. You can also subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows you to receive and view content quickly. This is very useful for active social news participants.

6. Make New Friends. Like any other social network, Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is an easy way for you connect with people outside of your usual circle. Make an effort to add active users you find interesting. A Twitter acquaintance can be developed into a long lasting friendship.

7. Network for benefits. Twitter can be used as a socializing platform for you to interact with other like-minded people, especially those in the same industry. It can be used to establish consistent and deeper relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.

8. Use it as a ToDo list. Use Twitter to record down what you need to do while you are away from the computer. Mark the tweet as a favorite to file it for referencing. Another alternative is to use an Online task management service that is synced with Twitter. One example is Remember The Milk.

9. Business Management. Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another. Workers can liaise with each other when working on group projects. Particularly useful when certain workers go out often in the field. Updates could be set to private for security reasons.

10. Notify Your Customers. Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in. Customers can subscribe via mobile or RSS for instant notification. Twitter can also be used to provide mini-updates for one-on-one clients.

11. Take Notes. Twitter provides you with an easy way to record important ideas or concepts you want to explore further. Include links relevant to ideas you want to explore. Note taking can also be done offline via mobile applications.

12. Event Updates. Businesses can use Twitter as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes. This is a hassle-free way of disseminating information, especially when you don’t have the means to set up a direct mobile link between you and the audience

13. Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users. Tweet about topics parallel to your product and close prospects away from public channels by using direct messages or offline communications. Discretion and skill is needed in this area.

14. Provide Live coverage. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.

15. Time Management and Analysis. Twitter can simply be used to keep a detailed record of what you are doing every daily. This might be boring for others but this type of usage is useful when you want to analyze how you spend and manage your time.

16. Set Up Meetings. Twitter can help you organize impromptu meetups. For example, you can twitter a message while at a cafe, event or art gallery and arrange to meet fellow users at a specific spot. It’s an informal and casual way of arranging a meeting.

17. Acquire Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Sometimes your followers will vote up the stories because they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites.

Some problems and issues I could see with using Twitter is that your information is out there for the world to see so I do get a bit hesitant of what I actually post up on there. Also it has a limitation of 140 characters per post, so if you had intentions of using it amongst an organisation or for any other important purpose you are very limited as to what you are able to write in a single post. For this reason I don’t think Twitter is useful for anything more than just status updates with friends or to keep updated with posts from pages that you follow.

After using twitter and exploring its capabilities, I was able to follow some sites which I often use and also follow the blogs of students from the course. For me Twitter is just like a more complicated version of Facebook as it has around the same capabilities just a lot more difficult to use (well for me anyway) haha. To be honest I don’t see myself using Twitter for anything else but for the purpose of this assignment, but hey you never know with time it might start to grow on me, just like facebook did ;).