Twitter is some sort of fact of life. You can follow news there, your favorite celebrity, let your followers know about your newest whatevers. It also can be a huge energy sink. Here are two resources to help:
- New York Time’s Columnist David Pogue wrote a great column called Twittering Tips for Beginners. If you’re not using twitter, or, like me, sometimes wondering why you are, David tells you clearly. Somehow Pogue always seems to put tech into a perspective I can deal with.
- Our own Lori Widmer told me about TweetDeck. This free program works on windoz, macs, iphones, lunix and who knows what else. It gives you a nifty overview of not only your tweet network but also hot trends. I’ve yet to fully explore it, but it’s feature rich and free. It also takes awhile to use.
- An almost useless but sort of fun site let’s you know how long you’ve been tweeting. According to it I’ve been tweeting for 2 years, 8 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 16 hours, 20 minutes, 10 seconds – scary.
http://www.aboutfreelancewriting.com/2010/07/2-twitter-resources-i-like/#comments
Write well and often,
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I’m glad you wrote about this. I myself recently wrote about something else that’s really useful: the “chats” on Twitter. I’m more familiar with the literary chats, but I know there are business-related ones too.
These work especially well on TweetDeck (which I love), because you can just do a search on one of the hashtags or trending topics, and TweetDeck will add a column where all tweets with that word or phrase in them will be shown. So people can conduct chats by using an agreed-upon hashtag, and sticking it in each tweet they make in the chat. (So for the literature chat known as “litchat,” we all add the #litchat hashtag, and all our comments are gathered into one place.)
It’s amazing what a site so apparently simple can actually accomplish. And once you do these searches or participate in these chats, you make contact with some fascinating people. Another form of networking!
Phyl recently posted..Push the Plot Forward
I’m still learning how to best use twitter…
Thanks for the mention, Anne.
Twitter is a dip-the-toe-in resource. It’s impossible (for me, at least) to understand it until you use it. I tried reading article after article, only to come away more confused. The big question for me: but what’s it for?
It’s for whatever you want it to be for. My Twitter is a way to connect to other writers, people in those industries I write for, potential clients, and most of all friends. But until you post your first few tweets and really interact with others, it’s one jumbled puzzle of messages.
Lori recently posted..Mixed Messages
I’m not sure how to sort out the number of people I’m now following… way too many.
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