twitter

[greenoak]

dang im trying to master facebook....do i have to learn twitter too??? it seems so silly..or rather i dont get it at all....who would care about my minute by minute.....
im very encouraged by facebook....
ann

[painperdu]

I don't 'get' twitter either and I doubt I ever will.

My feeling is that they see all these social websites evolving and they're trying to jump to the end of that evolutionary train by pre-empting it. They're spending money hyping it, hoping that it grows so big that it takes on a life of its own and then justifies itself. Other than this it serves no purpose; it breaks no new ground.

If it seems silly then that's because it is silly.

[Patrysha]

Well, I don't find it the least bit silly and it has led to connections that would have been harder to make had I used the other social networks to accomplish the same things.

That said - it's not an absolute necessity for any business.

It's handy for me for PR opportunities, monitoring news sources, keeping an eye on potential joint venture opportunities, monitoring potential competition, networking with friends, marketers and sometimes random people who share one of my interests.

[Harold Mansfield]

Twitter is definitely not for everybody, or every business. If you are going to tackle a Social Networking platform for your business, you can get a lot more miles out of Linked In and/or Facebook.

I don't think it's necessary for every business to be involved in all of them.

[vangogh]

You don't have to do anything. Twitter is a tool people use to communicate with each other and because many people are using it it's a way to reach people and network with them. There are plenty of other ways to reach people and network with them besides Twitter. You can choose to use as many or as few as you want.

I don't think Twitter is silly at all though. It's not about telling people what you're doing every minute. I know that's the impression some people have of it, but that's not how people use it. Some do, but Twitter is a lot more than what are you doing right now.

[Paper Shredder Clay]

Honestly, I love Twitter more than Facebook. Before I buy anything, of decent value, I Twitter to see what others are talking about it. Not that you can go by ever Twitter'er's opinion. I frequently enter Twitter contest, in hopes of winning that free iPhone app, or that iPhone. I frequently Twitter about Apple products and whatever else. I am not always glued to it. However, I feel its easier to keep up with what you want to keep up with on Twitter than Facebook. You don't have to use it, but if you are a company chances are people are already talking about you on there. For instance, when I have a bad meal at one of my favorite restaurants, I let the people know that such and such weren't that great. In the same way, if I am beyond happy with customer service, you better believe I Twitter the good news.

[JockPurtle]

Twitter is going to keep on growing.

I reckon google is going to buy twitter soon becuase it is a real time search engine and you can see what people are thinking right now.

As a business owner it is essential to have all type of social media becuase you can track what your customers are saying about you.

How powerful is that ?

[greenoak]

i agree with the above post...and can see how fast its growing...i watch a lot of news and those people have it..and the stars seem to have thousands of fans.....so i know i have to get a little more understanding of it....and get past the funny twitter jokes.and try and see if anyof it w ould benefit us...
..maybe someone can really explain it....how it works and how its a good tool for a business.....
for now im concentrating on facebook...

[JockPurtle]

@ GreenOak

Essentially twitter is a micro blogging platform, meaning it is a small blog where you have I think 140 characters to say whats on your mind.

You 'tweet' about what you are doing, what is happening, what you have seen (whatever) and people can respond to your tweet and then start a conversation.

Essentially it is like a virtual conversation between two people however the whole world can listen in and make a comment.

[Harold Mansfield]

i agree with the above post...and can see how fast its growing...i watch a lot of news and those people have it..and the stars seem to have thousands of fans.....so i know i have to get a little more understanding of it....and get past the funny twitter jokes.and try and see if anyof it w ould benefit us...
..maybe someone can really explain it....how it works and how its a good tool for a business.....
for now im concentrating on facebook...

I think Facebook is a much better fit for your business. As far as "stars" having thousands of Twitter followers...it's pretty easy to do that when you have the platform that they do.
If I was on T.V. all the time, I'd have a million followers too.
But it's not really about how many as it is How many are actually interested in what you have to say, or are interested in what you have to offer.

[Aaron Hats]

for now im concentrating on facebook...

You can set it up so that when you post on Facebook it sends that update to Twitter. We have customers that follow us on Facebook and not Twitter and vise versa.

[vangogh]

You can combine a few different social sites. One that's good to use is friendfeed, which will pull information from several different social sites. It's an easy place to follow what people are saying in various social sites.

[BizPals]

You can set it up so that when you post on Facebook it sends that update to Twitter. We have customers that follow us on Facebook and not Twitter and vise versa.

This is great because essentially you DON'T HAVE TO master twitter, you can just master facebook at the same time reap the benefits of twitter.

Great suggestion Aaron! :cool:

<please set up a signature>

[JayLane]

I certainly understand why people are hesitant to use Twitter. "Why would I want to hear about what other people are doing or tell them about what I'm doing?"

I view Twitter as a great way to share/receive resources. I can't tell you how much I've learned by clicking on articles that others have shared through Twitter. I try to do the same thing.

The other problem that I see is that people don't know how to effectively use Twitter. It's a little clunky going to Twitter.com. I recommend downloading TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com). It's a free application that allows you to easily manage your "Tweets." You can EASILY push updates to your Twitter account, Facebook page and Facebook profile. You can also set up a Twitter feed to your LinkedIn profile.

All of the social media sites are just different avenues for sharing value-added content with your customers and prospects. It takes some time but if you set it up correctly you can be efficient and easily share content in multiple places.

[vangogh]

I used to use TweetDeck, but I didn't like how it handled columns. It was either scroll horizontally or leave it maximized. I also prefer not to use Adobe Air applications since they tend to slow down my laptop a lot.

Now I use Tweetie. It's missing lists, though I think that's coming as the developer has added that to the Tweetie iPhone app. He's been slow to update the desktop app. I actually use Twitter more on my phone anyway so it's not a big deal.

[KristineS]

I just started using TweetDeck. I migrated from Seesmic Desktop. For me TweetDeck works well. There are a few features I would like that aren't there, but overall it works well. I've been hearing good things about Hoot Suite, but haven't tried it yet. Does anyone use that?

[vangogh]

There's a good overview on the HootSuite (http://hootsuite.com/) site. I don't use it myself, mainly because it's another thing to sign up for and it lives in the browser whereas I prefer desktop clients. It does look good and useful.

I can tell you that over the last few months I've seen more and more referrer stats from hootsuite so it does seem to be growing.

[KristineS]

I saw a comparison between Hootsuite and TweetDeck a while back. I'll have to see if I can find it. As I remember, Hootsuite won.

[lav]

Im enjoying Twitter a little more now since (yesterday) installing tweetdeck. Ive been meaning to do it for a while and glad I did because Im finally starting to see the purpose of Twitter.

[vangogh]

Having a dedicated tool definitely makes the site more useful, especially as the tools add features the Twitter site doesn't have.

Not too long ago Twitter purchased Tweetie. Tweetie is no longer being sold in the app store which means Twitter is likely soon to release their own version of it. That could mean other Twitter clients start going away since ultimately Twitter controls what information they can access. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

[mporgsoft]

Twitter is a microblog. While it may seem silly and pointless to tweet a limited block of text Google is indexing tweets and you do not need a lot of followers to expose your business to all of Twitter. Using hashtags (#) effectively will make your tweet searchable by anyone interested in the keyword you put a hashtag in fromt of.

[vangogh]

I'm not sure if the main reason to tweet would be to get the tweet indexed by Google, but it's certainly an advantage if done properly. Sad to say I often forget to add hashtags to tweets even though I know how valuable they are.

[KristineS]

I totally forget hashtags most of the time. Although, I have to admit, I'm more concerned with making connections with my followers when I'm on Twitter. I'm not so concerned about Google indexing my Tweets.