Over the summer, I was heavily encouraged to start a blog. People I knew were tired of my incessant monologues on politics, society, sports, and anything else that crossed my mind. Since some think that I am a good writer, a blog seemed like the perfect outlet.
I did start one but I quickly realized that simply writing stuff online wasn't good enough to disseminate my opinions. I needed an attractive design, an understanding of search engine optimization, and a willingness to tell everyone who would listen that I have a blog.
For a couple of months, I contented myself with building a base of blog posts and telling a few people. Hopefully, word would spread and I could bide my time until a larger base would find a consistent posting schedule and a number of blogs to read on the first visit.
What never crossed my mind was using Twitter. It seemed like the place where celebrities and nobodies alike got to give a synopsis of their latest meal or tell me how much they were spending on clothing. I didn't care about it and never thought about it.
That is until one day, when I was browsing the web and realized that a good hook could be posting links to thought-provoking or funny articles. My blog is, after all, dedicated in part to the defense of original ideas. Having realized that I wouldn't be posting more than about thrice a month, I wanted a weekly synopsis of the most interesting articles I found online.
However, I wanted to go beyond that. I wanted to have a something or other that was updated almost daily, so that my blog felt more "alive." And so, I remembered Twitter and its incessant updates. I realized that it had uses beyond updating me on Kanye's latest ego trip. I began posting links to articles as I found them and basing my weekly synopses off of those Tweets. I became a Twitter user.
Now, I think my blog's Twitter feed provides an important element. In the absence of frequent posts, it is something that people who like my blog can rely on for frequent updates. To maximize this effect, I put an abbreviated version of my Twitter feed on my blog so that people may visit the blog more often. I also tweet when I post something new, so that those who choose to follow on Twitter will know when to go to DWG.
However, I am still not entirely familiar with Twitter. I really just Tweet links and descriptions. A number of people have followed me and then disappeared, which I assume means they un-followed me. I'm not sure why this is but all these people follow over a thousand other Twitter feeds. Am I supposed to follow everyone who follows me? Should I follow random people so that they follow me?
Hopefully I'll be able to give you a better idea of how to use Twitter (and other social media resources) to build up a following next week in my presentation, but until then here are a few things.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, while it's easy to use Twitter in the sense of posting, following, unfollowing, and responding to others, however it can be more difficult to really understand what all the hype is about and how to get value, especially if you're interested in circles where not everyone uses Twitter. I love it and use it because a lot of my connections, my network, and people I work/have worked with use it, because I run in the circle of technology, startups, and social media.
The reason previous followers have disappeared is that yes, they probably unfollowed you- it happens, I unfollow people from time to time who no longer add value to my stream (or who just get annoying). The nice thing about Twitter compared to Facebook is that you don't have to have a mutual relationship with someone, they can follow you, but you don't have to follow them back and don't feel obligated to. Also some of your followers will be spam or people who are entriely too addicted to Twitter (following thousands) which makes it impossible for them to get any real value out of it because you can't effectively sort through that many tweets that are coming through that quickly.
Should you be following random people? Yes. But, not just so that they follow you. You should be following people because they interesting to you and following them will be a good way for you to get news from them. So if you're into NPR, follow some of your favorite speakers and if you're into politics follow your favorite politicians (although keep in mind they rarely do their own tweeting), follow news agencies, then follow some people from Clark (and follow ClarkMatters) because you'll feel like you can relate to those people (even if you don't know them in person, they'll be thrilled to have another Clarkie following them/responding to them because so few Clarkies use twitter). Blogs that you love will also probably have a Twitter feed you can follow as a good way to aggregate news/posts and then all these new people that you follow will lead you to other related people that you might want to follow. Plus Twitter now has a suggested follow feature that tries to match you up with people that may be interesting to you and soon you'll be hooked and wonder how you got your news any other way! Not only that, but because Twitter is so much shorter and less work than email you can often "@ reply" someone and get a response back, that way your voice/ opinion can be heard by those you want directly and then they can easily get back to you.
I hope this is somewhat helpful and helps cut through some of the Twitter mystery and I'll discuss some of these things and more next week.
Cheers!