Twitter for Dummies – Part 1: more than a microblog
Last week, @gaurisalokhe invited Jon from (AidWorker Daily) and I as guest speakers in a short FAO info session about micro blogging.
I realized how difficult it is to explain what this social media phenomenon really is all about. Does “Twitter is a micro-blogging tool” associate it too much with “blogging”: “I publish, you read, and if all goes well, you might even comment”?
Maybe this is what Twitter was originally intended for, but how do you explain to anyone it is much more than just ‘publishing 140 character content’. How do you explain the dynamic and the power of a Twitter social community of “followers”?
Another challenge is to explain that apart from ”www.twitter.com”, the web interface for Twitter, there are hundreds of add-ons and tools that make Twitter work for you.
I use Twitter for:
- yep, publishing “content”: links I find interesting, updates about what I do (with text, pictures and video)
- build a social community with people who have similar interests by interacting with my followers
- get people interested in my blogs by tweeting links to new posts
- get help and feedback by asking questions, posting polls
- give help and feedback by answering questions and polls
- monitor news and trends
- reading up on what others are reading and find interesting
- monitor the latest updates from sites and subjects I am interested in, almost as an alternative to an RSS reader
- get inspiration
- live blogging from events, workshops
- have fun
But the person next door might use it for something completely different:
- fundraising
- announcing where you can get free Pizzahut coupons
- rallying up the masses to protest against the Iran violence
- bash CNN, just because they are such an easy target
- broadcasting what second hand items she has for sale
- stay in touch with friends
- …
Is Twitter worth the trouble?
Yes it is. Here are three cases which showed me the power of twitter:
1. Late one evening, someone in my Twitter users’ community tweeted me:
Are you guys expelled from Sudan? This article (link) says so!
The linked article indeed stated the organisation I work for was expelled from Sudan, around the time 13 NGOs were forced to leave the country. Which was incorrect. As this issue was very sensitive for us, I contacted our Public Information people, who called the publishers of the website. Half an hour later, the –potentially damaging- statement was corrected. Without Twitter, I would never have caught that article.
2. A few months ago, I tweeted:
Looking for a webguru to help us analysing a complicated portal development project
Sure enough someone from my community replied. He was available within two weeks. We started communicating via Email, and in the end, he actually found a grant from the Gates Foundation to fund his trip. I not only found a webguru, but got him fast and for free.
3. Last week, I tweeted:
Writing a post about blogplatforms. I know Blogger, Wordpress and Tumblr but looking for a TypePad geek to help me out
Three people responded and assisted me in the article, filling in the blanks I left. Two were part of my followers’ community, the other one was just searching Twitter for the keyword “TypePad”.
Twitter for Dummies
In this series, “Twitter for Dummies”, or call it “A Twitter Primer”, I will cover this social media phenomenom from the bottom up. What Twitter is, what the different components are, best practices, the tricks of the trade, and a list of the most useful add-ons. How to make Twitter work for your nonprofit purposes?
In the tradition of BlogTips, I will spec these posts with my own experiences.
In the next post we tackle “How to explain Twitter as a social networking tool?”
Interesting links to wet your appetite:
17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
An analysis of fundraising with Twitter
Using Twitter for nonprofit and advocacy
How to use Twitter as a Twool
7 uncommon uses for Twitter
Cartoon courtesy Boston Globe (Mike Luckovich)
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Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, blogger, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order. (
Thanks for the tip. Seeing the small numbers in Google analytics, i was thinking about removing the retweet button.
BTW, considering the enormous amount of you follow i follow crowd in the twitter, would people care to click those links
I don’t know if your retweet button shortens the URL with bit.ly, but -as described in this post- that could give you a black and white figure on the traffic the tweets give.
I do, on my links and have been astonished by the amount of traffic each tweet gives.
It is true there is a “scratch mine, I’ll scratch yours” mentality in the following in Twitter, but not so much in retweeting. At least not in the social community I have created around each of my Twitter accounts.
And maybe that is key in all of it: ensure the quality of your followers. Maybe one tip: I *never* autofollow. This means that “my” social community would never follow me, simply because I would follow back.
I’d like to say they follow my tweets, because they like the content
Hope that helps a bit,
Peter
I have just discovered your site via ICT-KM, and it will keep me busy for hours…. I have been blogging for a few months now, we are one of the NGOs who want to use social media more and are still finding out how best to do that (ILEIA, see http://www.leisa.info). So your site is full of useful stuff (so far I’d only found social media for marketing your business).. thanks and keep up the good work!
Karen
While these sites may be free for us, the end user, google and yahoo take the numbers we provide for them, and they scan the content we enter on their services, and use it as fodder to sell their profitable products, such as adwords.
It is in their interest to keep these sites working well, as the critical mass we provide is the very product they can leverage to advertisers.
That being said, Michael Keizer is correct- if the service is mission critical, buy the pro account, and get on the line with their support if needed.
Do you know of an alternative to Pipes?
@Hank:
Don’t think there is any pro-account formula for Yahoo Pipes unfortunately. The only alternative I found is http://pipes.deri.org/ but looks even more of a hackers tool, and I don’t know how well it performs.
I think I will make my own…
Peter.
i just love to Twitter everyday with my friends. Twitter is much better than blogging in my opinion and it is very addictive too.
. ..
thank you for this good information
nice post . Very helpful information. Thank you.
Hi, this blog post is very well-written and appears extremely useful. But I was just wondering if you could clear something up? You mention Newsgator as a product, but the link to their website shows Newsgator is a company with a lot of products – it isn’t clear which tool or product you used to amalgamate feeds and produce script. Could you explain this step in some more detail?
If you post here please email me to let me know
Many thanks
Jez
Hi Jez,
You are totally correct. Newsgator changed their services end August. The online aggregator functions they used to have is no longer available.
If you are looking for a feed aggregator or RSS-to-script function, have a look at this post:
http://www.blogtips.org/free-rss-tools/
best,
Peter
i think the problem is solved now..
Yahoo Pipes went back up after almost 3 weeks of intermittent problems. There are still problems saving new or modified Pipes, though. That problem exists since at least 2 months….
Peter, thank you for including us in your review. I am happy you like the Dlvr.it service. Stay tuned. LOTS of good things coming. Including many more outputs – Facebook coming very soon.
Also, thanks for the feedback on the stats. In order to “provide interesting statistics,” mash the data and provide some real intelligence we use the Dlvr.it short URL. It makes the data consistent and allows us to do some interesting analysis – lots of things going on in the lab now.
Stay tuned…
Best,
Bill Flitter
Founder, dlvr.it
comprehensive post! Another tools for RSS to twitter is hootsuite, I havent tried it out.. but it gives the feature.
I just discovered Hootsuite’s RSS-to-Twitter function. Will try it out, and update the post.
Thanks for the reminder.
Peter
I agree I think social media is really more important for better communicating with your supporters and building a strong foundation and network of people interested in your cause.
These tips are great. Thanks for sharing.
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