Twitter confessional

I am talking about Twitter at the First Tuesday Blog Club tomorrow night.  This may be an odd format for a blog post, but here are some of the ideas I may or may not talk about, depending on how the session goes, with links to the places some of the ideas are derived from:

Intro

• Why do you use Twitter?
• Do you want to use Twitter for business or pleasure?
• What to you want to achieve with Twitter?
• Does it matter?

 I won’t be telling you how to get 300,000 followers; but I can tell you how I have got to 1,400!

Why I use Twitter

• Working on joint project – questions and answers.
• Offering tech help – stuck volume control on iPad.
• Retweeting observations: “If only they enforced bank regulations like they do park rules, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
• Reading thoughts: “Closed networks are ignorance amplifiers”.
• News: The world’s lightest material has been created – a nanotechnology metal grid 100 times lighter than polystyrene foam.
• Sharing domestic activities: Making Christmas pudding.

 https://delarue.net/blog/2012/04/a-series-on-social-media/

How to get “Klout”

• Set goals?
• Develop your own voice
• Get noticed
• Find interesting hashtags and use them – eg #km, #kmlf, #kmedu
• Find people using paper.li and tweet on their subjects
• Get re-tweeted by influencers 
• Klout.com is interesting, and gives some guidance on your effectiveness.
• It can tell you a bit about your style
• It isn’t everything, and don’t compare yourself too much with others, as it can be gamed.
• It can be misleading: eg, am I influential on Melbourne, Sydney and the Philadelphia Eagles?

 http://klout.com/

How to misbehave on Twitter

• Multiple @s too often
• Nothing but links
• Duplicating same link > 25%
• Posting same tweet too often
• > 50% “app spam” – 4 sq, blip.fm, etc
• No activity for over one month
• Fewer than 10 tweets
• Never interact with followers
• Over 90% RSS feed
• Follow back < 10%
• All talk, no interaction, over 24 per day
• Unoriginal – > 70% RTs
• Self-obsessed – > 50% of tweets about themselves
• Unpopular – < 30% follow back

 http://thetwitcleaner.com/

Expanding your scope

• Set goals.
• Choose who to follow – look at lists. Where is your audience?
• Tweet throughout the day. Use schedules, but be there to follow up.
• Use a simple handle that is easy to remember.
• Use your profile – include useful info, a welcoming picture and link to landing page.
• Connect with other social networks
• Do not use protected tweets or validators – make it easy!
• Remember to think about context, particularly if you are tweeting via another social network.
• Be helpful to others – it’s not all about you.
• Be nice – don’t name and shame unfollowers.

 http://inboundmarketinggeek.com/twitter-mistakes/

And who knows? Some of that may even make some sense. Thanks to those on Twitter who tweeted some of the links I have used here.