The is a lot of fodder flying around the blogosphere after Neilson’s report on Twitter Retention. I think the study was a bit flawed and needed a bit more foundation on real people not just numbers.
My chime in on the conversation as posted on Linkedin.com Twitter Group:
As with any new from of communication there will always be those that dont get it. This was true, of email, pagers, cellphones and blogs. All of the aforementioned are very pervasive now and are just common vernacular today.
Twitter has bot the power and the buzz to be the next household communications word.
You may not get it now but than you may not be trying to get it because there is no immediate upside for you business today, don’t let this get you out of the conversation. Todays memetic behaviors of consumers often spread faster than the swine flu when the right catalyst hits. Twitter is just waiting one of these catalyst. ie: @AplusK and @CNN battle and @oprah
My advise hang in there, just start communicating with people, network, look around but don’t try to sell yet, when the damn burst you’ll be there. Keep the big white Motorola Cellphone in the back of your mind thinking of the days when we all said who the heck needs to be that ready to use a phone… my god that thing is huge… cellphones “I don’t get it…
The uber code designers at Arc90.com have just blessed us with yet another url based link sharer for Twitter. The DiggBar, HootSuite, TwitPwr and Tweetie all have this feature but this one is different. Arc90 is famous for their successful app Readability , which added the end all be all feature of removing the clutter from what we like to read online. Completely outdoing InstaPaper, Readability just got it right.
Well I’m here to tell you that for now there is no better link sharer for twitter than TBUZZ.
TBUZZ offers the same basic features but also allows you to see who else is trending what you are sharing. Sounds funny but watch the video and you’ll get it.
You can install TBUZZ in just a few seconds by visiting:
Good blogs have a voice. Who wrote this? What is their name? What can I figure out about who they are that they have never overtly told me? What’s their personality like and what do they have to contribute — even when it’s “just” curation. What tics and foibles fascinate make me about this blog and the person who makes it? Most importantly: what obsesses this person?
Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?
Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go. Then, on some level, they encourage me to follow the evolution of their interest through a day or a year. There’s a story here. Ethical “via” links make it easy for me to follow their specific trail of attention, then join them for a walk made out of words.
Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated. They show some level of craft, thinking, and continuity beyond the word count mandated by the Owner of Your Plantation. If a blog has fixed limits on post minimums and maximums? It’s not a blog: it’s a website that hires writers. Which is fine. But, it’s not really a blog.
Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect. I regret there are not more blogs that see format as the container for creativity — rather than an excuse to write less or link without context more.
Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s. If this isn’t happening every few weeks, the blogger is either bored, half-assing, or taking new medication.
Good blogs make you want to start your own blog. At some point, everyone wants to kill the Buddha and make their own obsessions the focus. This is good. It means you care.
Good blogs try. I’ve come to believe that creative life in the first-world comes down to those who try just a little bit harder. Then, there’s the other 98%. They’re still eating the free continental breakfast over at FriendFeed. A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
Good blogs know when to break their own rules. Duh. I made a list, didn’t I? Yes. I did. Big fan.
And, yeah, you should disagree with potentially all of this. It’s because I have an opinion, and so do you. It’s why you probably have a blog. See? The system works.
Let’s just say I Love Alltop. It is the easiest way to get all the news and information you need to get you through the day, learn a new skill or just brush up on trivia before talking to that irritating boss or brother in law. I found the tutorial on the AllTop Blog.
ZipSkinny is one of the coolest websites on this list. The site provides an interesting “first glance” at a ZIP Code area. Just enter your zip code and learn all sorts of interesting factoids about your neighborhood.
This is a presentation stolen and updated to be more broad as it was originally made by two teachers who are upset at the current lack of car our government gives to education.
It is worth your full attention for 5 mins. you may want to watch a second time or more and stop on the slides that hurt to watch the most. This is why we need to start paying more attention to what is going on around us and not be such a me generation.
Please pass this along to as many people as you can.
When I started to use Twitter, I wanted to see how easy it was to use and why people would want to use it. Essentially it appears you can use Twitter for three reasons, firstly; for purely social objectives or secondly; and more commonly as a way of promoting your business your ideas and your brand or most likely a mixture of 1 and 2. The easiest way to describe Twitter is that it is text messaging on the Internet. You only have 140 characters to post a blog so there is an art in itself in getting your message over with this limitation. To quote Winston Churchill “I don’t have time to write you a short note so I will write to you a long one”. With such a limited number of characters you do have to think quite clearly about what you’re saying, which in itself is no bad thing.
So I’m assuming, as I do that you want to use Twitter to build up your network and promote your business is a few tips on how to get started. Firstly I would say that twitter is incredibly easy to use. But before you start you need to decide on your persona. That is to say do want your tweets to be of a personal nature or of a business nature. Perhaps we should look again at it in a slightly different way and ask yourself the question do you think that some of your personal messages would be inappropriate for your business contacts two receive, if you think the answer is yes then you should open two twitter accounts. If the answer is no, or probably no, then one will be sufficient.
Getting started is easy once you have signed up get your home page and it settings. Let’s not worry about pictures and suchlike at the moment, and concentrate on settings. The most important section is the one line bio. Give some thought about what you want to say, as potential followers will read this bio and use it to decide whether to follow you or not. A poorly written bio will not encourage followers.
Right we are now ready to go. So what do you say, at this point it’s a learning curve for you so I had just try a few different posts to see how comfortable you are with them. The most important thing is to be yourself, remember this is not a 5 minute wonder, potentially you’ll be using this medium for years to come. To build up your network you need to find some people to follow, and you need some followers. The best way to start, if you can, is use to connect with some of your friends who already use Twitter, that gives you a place to start.
Go to one of your friends pages, and on the right hand side you will see the word following and underneath that I will be a number of mini pictures, choose one at random and click on it. This will take you through to that person’s home page, read their Bio and if you like it, just below their picture you will see a radio button which says follow. Press it and you are now following that person and they are part of your network. Repeat this process as often as you like and you will quickly build up an understanding of those individuals who are of interest to you and those who are not. The current etiquette is that if you follow somebody, but they will for the most part follow you back.
For the first few days, don’t worry too much about growing your network, your best spending your time understanding how twitter works. You’ll get a sense from reading of the submissions and from that you should start to understand the best way for you to communicate via twitter. A couple of other ways to speed up the building your network is to use something called “twitter local”, download it and use it to identify people close to you who are on twitter. Follow them and as you are local they are very likely to follow you back.
So that’s a quick way of getting started. More on this when I have learned more myself.
Laurence Ainsworth is using is founder of Exigent Consulting which provides advice and support for small to medium businesses. Exigent specialises in Business Turnaround, Sales and Marketing and Mentoring & Coaching. He can be found ontwitter.com/laurenceexigent and at www.exigent-uk.com He is a regular contributor of articles on marketing and sales and is a frequent Blogger and Twitter-er
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