The Business Case for Twitter
(Originally appeared on From the Doc Side)
Lately, much has been said about Twitter. Chad wrote a great post (Twitter Makes Relationships Work - Right Now) with an explanation of what Twitter is so I'll skip the overview and get to the business case.
Let's
start with a little confession I should make… For a while, I had a
twitter account but didn't use it much. I wasn't quite ready to be a
twitter evangelist. Everything changed for me when I chose a focus for
how I was going to use twitter. What I realized was while I didn't
always like the concept of letting people know all the mundane things I
was doing in my average day, I did like how it could improve my
professional and business connections. Here are some ways to use
twitter in the business/professional sense.
1. Follow your colleagues.
Not only do you create connections across teams but you can stay
informed of the latest news in their world. I am following a few
leaders in my company with specialties in technology, webby things,
marketing, customer support, etc.
2. Follow fellow professionals.
This is perhaps my favorite way to connect. I love learning about what
other people in my field are learning, doing, finding. I could never
keep up with all the changes in technical communication and I don't
have to. Instead I can look to peers and mentors for what they find
interesting. I share the things I find interesting and our worlds
really do expand.
3. Promotion! Share your work content. I am
posting a link to our From the Docs Side... blog every time I write
one. If we do something else cool, I'll share that too.
4. Tweme the possibilities.
If you don't know what a tweme is, it's adding a hash mark to posts so
they can easily be found in public streams. I had such a good time at
my recent technical communication conference by tweming with other
conference goers. Here's our example.
Just by putting in a hash mark we could follow each other's post on the
same topic. There are so many possibilities with twemes. You could
create one for your local professional chapter, a conference, topics in
your organization you want to separate, etc.
5. Tweetscan.
Tweetscanning is searching all twitter streams for specific keywords.
You want to know about technical communication, type that into tweetscan.com
and you can find what other people are saying about tech comm and
perhaps you'll find some cool new people in your field to follow.
6. Want to know who's the most popular in twitter, go to a site like tweeterboard.com. This site ranks people on popularity. This is again, another way to find noteworthy people tweeting.
7. Support social causes. Movements are happening on Twitter. Just google Frozen Pea Fridays or read here and you can learn how they started a movement to support a woman with breast cancer and ultimately raised money for research.
Either way, definitely re-consider your use of Twitter.
You get to control who's in your network and who you want to follow.
Also, if you type twitter apps into google, you'll discover new apps
are being created daily as people are learning to harness the power of
micro-blogging. After all, not everyone has the patience or time to
read long blogs like this one. Instead, we want quick updates under 140
characters in length.
Even these guys are tweeting and they're no slouches -
Guy Kawasaki - http://twitter.com/guykawasaki
Robert Scoble - http://twitter.com/Scobleizer
Kevin Rose - http://twitter.com/kevinrose
So, are you ready for the twitter movement?