Unleash Your Words, Unlock Your Potential | 617.905.6717

All a Twit about Twitter – post for Twitter neophytes

By on May 30, 2012 in Twitter | 0 comments

I pledge to you that I will never Tweet about what I had for breakfast or that I’m stuck in the longest line in the Target and the guy in front actually managed to pick up the only two lawn chairs without a price tag forcing the need for a ridiculously long price check.

Why would you care anyway? In fact, why would you care about anything on Twitter? Honestly, there are a lot of things written that you probably don’t care about. But don’t write it off just yet. If used well, Twitter can be a great communication tool.

If you’re not sure, start slowly. In this case, the first step would be to sign up and start “following” people to get a sense of what’s going on.

The key is in who you select to follow. Choose wisely and you will get a stream of relevant headlines that are of interest to you. Choose poorly and you’re wasting your time reading about pop tarts and slow check out clerks and wondering why so many people think Twitter is so great.

It’s not too hard to find what you’re looking for. Do a search of people using they key words like news, small business, or orange groves – whatever you want to know about. You’ll get a list of Tweeters. Read a few posts by those who look interesting to see if you like what they’re writing about.

There is a school of thought that if you follow a lot of people it will help you build your follower base. To me, that is advanced Tweeting – we can get to that later. Right now, concentrate on quality over quantity or you risk getting an overwhelming stream of information.

You may have noticed that I’m not talking about your Tweeting, which is why most people sign up, right? That’s important too, but that’s the next step. For now, this will help you find some value in Twitter without too much effort.

My twitter handle is @jenjournalist. Although I signed up a long time ago when people were trying to figure out if we tweet or twit, I held of tweeting for a long time because, quite honestly, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to tweet about. I only knew that it wasn’t complaining about soggy cereal or trying to resist buying candy bars while in that long Target line. Eventually, I decided that I should focus on small businesses, which is the focus of my column, Small Business Matters, for the Boston Herald. This is a way for me to keep on top of what’s going on in the world of entrepreneurs and to connect with small business owners.

Have fun and let me know if your tweeting.

 

Post a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.