Twitter – I finally figured it out.
I’ve been actively using Twitter for about two weeks now. I’ve been reading blog posts about it, checked services, downloaded “Tweet Clients” and what not. Somehow, the short-worded world of Twitter didn’t really open up to me that easily. I tend to be wordy, as you know, so the 140 marks -limit really didn’t do it for me. But, I think I finally got the gist of it – in the bloggers point of view.
Frankly, if I had stayed on Twitter.com alone, I still wouldn’t get it. Twitter.com is very basic compared to all the services surrounding it. Who has time to hang out on one site all the time anyway? Not me – and I’m not doing anything that important. Twitter is supposed to keep you up-to-date to the minute, but who on Earth has time to stare at the public Twitter update stream to come up with something even remotely interesting? So I downloaded a couple of desktop Tweeting programs to make it easier to update and follow. But quite frankly, even that didn’t really get me much anywhere.
Then I found Tweetlater.com and their keyword alerts. It sends me an email summary of tweets that have certain keyword in them, every 4 hours. I can quickly read it through to see what people are saying right now about social networking for example. Most of the time, they don’t say anything that interesting. It only takes that one tweet though, that will spark your interest and get you somewhere. The thing is that the bulk of bloggers don’t say anything interesting or helpful either. Most of the time, they write the same stuff over and over – 10 steps to successful blogging, 13 great tutorials, 15 rules to great web design blah blah blah, heard it all before and wrote about it already. It takes you a lot longer to check if a blog has any useful information to you, or anything you’d find remotely entertaining, rather than read through a bunch of Tweets.
Sure, you may miss a great article on Twitter because of a badly structured tweet, but if the tweet is good, chances are that the blogger can actually write – something that you can’t take granted these days. Being witty and to the point in 140 marks or less is a good test for your self-expression skills.
You’ll also be able to quite quickly put your finger on the latest trends. For example, I have a keyword “Finland” on my keyword alert. It took me one summary to learn, that postcrossing is huge in Finland. About 70% of Tweets concerning Finland were about writing a postcard to Finland or receiving a postcrossing-card from Finland. (After I learned this, I told Tweetlater to ignore messages about cards thank you very much.)
During the last 2 weeks I found out that promoting your blog on Twitter is more effective than StumbleUpon – at least if you’re a small-timer like myself. Stumble relies on thumbs up and your readers stumbling your posts, while Twitter… You tweet it, and if you’re lucky (good) someone will retweet it, because it’s easy. It takes about half a second compared to properly stumbling it (for the first time). My advice: If you have those share-buttons on your blog and you had to choose only one, choose Twitter.
Another important thing to know as a blogger, is that you can automatically tweet your blog posts by using TwitterFeed. In addition, there are few services that will update your Twitter status, but a word of warning… Avoid loops! I went tweet-rss crazy myself, and added every feed I could think of to every service I could, and ended up having the same update appear first on Facebook, which updated Twitter, which updated Facebook, which updated Twitter… And so forth. You don’t want to annoy your followers by doing that! I was lucky nobody reported me as a spam bot before I realised what was happening!
The most awesome thing about Twitter is that it is actually very social. A lot of other social networks could easily just drop the “social” off and be more accurate. Because there’s nothing else to do on Twitter than send messages to people and read them, you won’t get side tracked by millions of applications and editing your profile all the time. How many of you confess to staring at their own profile page thinking what else to add, while hardly ever visiting other people’s profiles? Twitter has stripped everything else off the menu and sticks with the main thing: Socialising. On Twitter, reading other people’s content is even more rewarding than sending out your own. That’s just fantastic.
And for some reason, hearing “follow me on Twitter” isn’t nearly as irritating as the normal “add me as a friend” even though you can’t possibly know who I am. Twitter is public by definition, so following thousands of people is completely allowed, unlike on many other social networking sites. So, follow me on Twitter, only if you want, of course. 
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I never did figure Twitter out, but reading this is making me seriously reconsider giving it a second chance…
Tony Singles last blog post..Jean-Paul Fashionista [Trottersville #99]
Give it a good Aussie go, Tony, and keep me posted once you learn new things. I had a massive Heureka-experience yesterday when I was reading my keyword summary, so I would start with TweetLater for sure.
I’m still trying to find the benefit of using Twitter as it sends me almost no traffic to my websites. I’m still not sure how people find me and add me. It’s a tad bit confusing.
B.M. Garretts last blog post..Leaked footage of Battlefront 3
Hi B.M!
Try Twitterfeed, it will automatically add your posts to Twitter. It may not show much of an improvement in your stats if you have only a few followers, but it won’t hurt, that’s for sure. The trick – to start with – is to find someone with A LOT of followers, who is interested in the same things as you write about, and hope they do a retwit for you.
I have been on Twitter for months and still can’t figure it out. I think it because I am afraid to “tweet” at work and once I have spent 10 hours in front of a computer at work, the last thing I want to do is go home and sign on to Twitter. This leads to infrequent posts and no time to really engage. But maybe I’ll give it another shot since so many people think it’s worth it. Good post!
Suzs last blog post..Chivalry is Dead…
Hi Suz, That’s completely understandable, not wanting to tweet at work. Maybe an update an hour would be acceptable though? (You do 10 hour days?
)
I am definitely a big twit and love it for many reasons
I can promote my blog, post daft pictures/doodles using twitpic, update my facebook, follow cool bands, get the latest news and of course keep up with my blog buddies
Have added you over there now and this blog to my feed reader so I don’t forget to come back!
Claires last blog post..A year in review: March 2008
Thanks Claire! I loved your profile bio.
Nah, we don’t need pants! Have you forced your blog buddies to join, or are they more up with the times than mine? 
I had to twist a few arms, but to be honest I got fed up of trying to sell it to some. I think some either get twitter or don’t. At lot think its just another waste of time thing that they can’t be arsed signing up to.
Claires last blog post..A year in review: March 2008
It is hard to sell – it seems like a massive chat site! If you’re not into chatting, you’re very likely not to see the point of it.
Did some looking and found this at blog catalog. Decided to give it a shot, seems fitting. What i want to do is add the code that shows your latest tweet on the blog…almost like a pre-update.
I’m glad you did find your way over, Papyrus Watch – that’s a good tip. I’ve been thinking about adding it, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Now I think I’ll have to.
Hi,
My predicament is similar to, or even worse than Suz’s. I followed some advice and did a bit but failed to check back twitter for days on end. Once I break it, won’t feel comfortable trying to catch up again. I’m not sure even now how I can make the best of it and simply feel overwhelmed every time I make an attempt to understand it. The ones to benefit immensely apart from a few lucky ones that make good use of, are the marketers I suppose.
Pushhyarags last blog post..Romancing with Words
I have been spending some time on Twitter and it works fine. Not only social view but also Traffic view.
I got 20 hits within 24 hours with just 3 followers. I don’t know how but my link tracker syas so and I have to believe.
People who are active get 2000+ hits daily from there. And yes, Its faster than Stumble Upon and also not browser dependent! (I use Opera
)
Mr. Is last blog post..3 Reasons to Avoid a Random Blog
Hi,
Once in a while I get peaks from Stumbleupon, but rarely.
As for Twitter, I rencently started using it.
Although I also use it to promote my blog (not “agressively” though), I also use it to post interesting and curious stuff that I read or hear about.
Kind regards,
José
I think your experience pretty much mirrors my own. At first I did not get Twitter, but after a few months of putting a good effort into it, I was pleasantly surprised by the connections I made and the things I learned.
You have a very nice blog here, by the way. I’m glad I stopped by, and I’ll be back! Off to subscribe and follow you on Twitter
George
Tumblemooses last blog post..Are you a writer or an author?