I don’t understand Twitter
Dear Readers,
I don’t really get Twitter. Anyone want to clue me in? I have 3.6k followers but I don’t really get twitter I think because I find it hard to keep up. It feels easier to me to follow people on Facebook.
Do you use Twitter to follow others? Do you use Twitter to post to your followers? Or both?
What kinds of messages do you read on Twitter?
Who do you follow most on Twitter?
What tools are you using to help your tweeting?
- Ben Fitts
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Hi Ben
I have sporadically been using Twitter for a few years. I have used several of the Twitter machines that people have introduced to increase the follower count,but have usually found that Twitter suspends the account for reasons they never deign to explain.I know that people go on about monetizing Twitter,but I never caught on how.To me twitter is like someone muttering to themselves when they get up in the morning.Cap is off the toothpaste,running late..didnt get up when the alarm went off etc.Stream of consciousness stuff, I do not know why anyone would be interested in the ramblings of a stranger,but I don’t understand the fascination with reality T.V. either.Hope this helps.
Regards
Neil Thomas,North Devon U.K.
Hi Ben,
Interesting email, someone saying they are confused about stg and ask for help!
Well, I am pretty much in the same boat as you and Neil above.
I observe that people seem to use Twitter to tweet, but not to listen! It’s like walking down the street and hearing the happy tweets of all the birds in the trees. Cute, fun, but no one listens!
Tweeting seems like adding to the noise!
I guess there are personal themes or subjects where tweeters have conversations, but as far as business is concerned, it seems that tweeting is not an exchange of ideas or feelings or info. Just a huge amounts of monologues.
What is your observation?
Do you have a solution?
LOL… yah I felt the same with most of ya too on twitter… the internet just has too much noise. But I have connected with a few people on facebook whom I met on twitter. Relationships take time to build and both twitter and facebook seem like good places to start
Hi Ben My wife and l find twitter a great tool for branding, some seo and building a prospect list but have not really tried to directly monetize from twitter, not sure if it be good to do so as your like taking value off the table to those all new important followers, we have been on twitter since about August 2008 we used a few auto follower programs in early days but seem to create havoc with spam etc so for well over 2 years we have let it grow organically hope this may be of help to some one.
What “Twitter” tools do you guys use?
I’ve used TweetDeck, HootSuite, and SocialOomph so far…
Hey Ben! How’s it going? I hope you’ve had a merry merry Christmas!
When I first started out using twitter.. it was a marathon on who had the most followers and it seemed that that was the best thing to get you noticed but Twitter had lots of problems with people installing bots and stuff like that last year or early this year that made me stop using it for a pretty long time.
However, lately I’ve been back on and unfollowed a ton of people! At least 10% of my list, so that’s more than 1000 people unfollowed. I’ve taken the liberty to only follow people who have a profile picture of themselves (not a cartoon or a logo etc.) and they also share content that is within my niche.
I personally use Tweetdeck as it sorts out who sends me direct messages and “mentions” me. I think it’s a good thing, so you can track who retweets and shares your content, so you can create a relationship with those people. I believe it’s not possible to follow every single tweet but just browse through and see what catches your eye, so it’s really important to stand out!
Hope my two cents worth has provided you with some valuable feedback!
Regards,
Darren Spruyt
Hi Ben,
When people ask me about Twitter, I often explain that it is much like text messaging, only it is to many people at a time instead of just one to one. However the best explanation of Twitter I have ever found was in a Blog post by Havi Brooks it can be found here: http://www.fluentself.com/blog/stuff/twitter-demystified-the-great-debunking-begins/
I use Twitter to both follow people and to post to them. The people I follow includes friends, family, bloggers and people who have followed me first (yes I often follow back those who follow me).
Hi Ben,
Just saw your post on Twitter and found it helpful. Have also started to use Beebo and have incorporated it into my personal website http://www.funcardsonline.com and my blog http://jmcards.blogspot.com/. Check it out…
Jon Pfarr