Why make Twitter a friend?
We are all bombarded with calls on our time from work, home and friends so why should we get involved with Twitter? After all, most of us struggle to update our Facebook, connect with Linkedin and manage our 'personal brand'. Do we really need to understand a new set of geeky words, such as 'Re-tweets', or worry about the stalking of so-called 'followers'?
At Interim Partners we believe this is another essential way of creating closer relationships with our candidates and sharing the interim management and contracting assignments we have to offer. So in addition to the desktop, it is now very quick and easy to twitter through to the mobile phone and reach our interims instantly, which is a real bonus for those who are often on the move.
In particular, a service called Twitterjob search, allows Interim Partners to post new assignments instantly into the global twittersphere - a community that is growing at over 1,382% per month. Twitter receives more than 55 million visits each month, is about to reach its 5 billionth tweet, and is the third most used social network. Now with new agreements signed between Twitter, Google and Microsoft, whereby the micro-blogs will be included in Google and Bing searches, being part of the Twitter conversation will become even more important.
So, apart from the benefit of viewing new interim assignments in Twitter at http://twitter.com/interimpartners, how can Twitter help interims build their profile?
As with everything on the web and in the world of blogging, this begins with having something to say that is interesting, timely and relevant. Twitter has been criticised for being awash with banal conversations and It is true that, according to recent research, over 40% of the tweets on Twitter are seemingly pointless, such as 'Made a cup cake today with chocolate and peanuts', but the rest are either conversational messages - 'How about meeting for a drink at the Kings Head, pass it on', Re-tweets (messages passed on, such as a link to a website, picture or video), or a promotional message from a company or brand. As with all media use, you have to be clear about who your audience is and how you can tailor your message to make it relevant and compelling.
Mixing social tweets and business tweets is not the most prudent use of the technology; a client or business colleague might not be impressed if you tweet how many pints you drank the night before! And be aware that because of Twitter's 'open' culture you cannot control what your followers tweet about, so you might occasionally want to monitor this and 'block' followers who do not fit your own brand values or sensitivities.
Twitter is, however, a valuable tool for building your network of contacts and a great way to impress them with your expertise, insight and acumen in your business sector. Linking your tweets to blogs you have written or passing comments on business issues show you are involved in a sector's vibe; using hashtags (see glossary of terms below) to aggregate your conversations around a particular event or theme is a great way to attract followers, who join your network on the basis of a shared experience. And micro-blogging on Twitter will certainly help your search engine profile, which in turn will support the integrity of your personal brand. If you want to see a few Twittering CEO's why not have a look at;
If you do not have a Twitter account then have a read below and find out what to do. And don't forget to go to http://twitter.com/interimpartners and click Follow.
What is Twitter and how does it work?
- Create an account by going to www.twitter.com. Your account comprises your username and password, your picture and optional background image to display behind your page.
- Find interesting people to follow, and they can choose to follow you. Other Twitter users may also initiate contact by following you. This will include your friends and contacts, but it is also normal Twitter etiquette to follow/be followed by people who you do not know offline. In this way, unlike many social networks, Twitter is a powerful way of building a network, making new introductions and accessing interesting and varied content.
- Post updates of up to 140 characters. You can do this using a variety of applications via the web using your computer or mobile phone. Everyone who is following you can read your updates. People can also subscribe to your updates using the RSS feed (this means they can receive your updates via their preferred feed reader software or browser start page without using Twitter), or see them in the Twitter public timeline.
- Twitter updates are usually in the form of an answer to the imaginary question:
"What are you doing now" or "What holds your attention now"? This will often include links to other websites (using link shortening services such as tinyurl.com). Two useful terms often used to describe this activity are 'micro-blogging' - blogging in miniature by posting short updates throughout the day, and 'hyper-connectedness' - the idea of being in constant contact with your network and aware of what holds their attention right now. - Your Twitter stream (the information you see when you use Twitter) is made up of your own updates and those of all the Twitter users you are following. Other users will see their own streams, which display the updates of the users they are following. Therefore what you see is not the same as what other users will see.
- Users interact with each other in the following ways:
- @Reply. You can reply to an update posted by another user in your twitterstream by clicking the reply button or typing @ and then their username at the start of the message. Anyone following you will see this reply, irrespective of whether they are already following the recipient. This is one of the ways in which users find new people to follow, as you are effectively introducing that person to your followers by showing his/her username and engaging them in conversation.
- DM. You can send direct messages to individual users, provided you are 'friends' (ie, you are following each other). These are private and can only be seen by the sender and recipient.
- Re-tweeting. As people have different networks of followers, it is common practice to repeat interesting tweets from your own stream for the benefit of all of your followers, preceding it with 'Re-tweet', or just 'RT' for short. You do not need permission to do this - it is considered a compliment to the originator to repeat their content.
- Hashtags. You can include keywords in your updates in order to associate those updates with a particular event, movement, current trend or issue by adding a hash sign (#) in front of a word. For example, at events Twitter users will often agree a common tag to identify themselves to each other and form a Twitter 'back channel' for that event. Tagging tweets enables users to collaborate to document a cultural happening. In this way, all tweets containing a particular tag can be aggregated into another medium, for example, via a blog projected on screen at the event, or displayed on a map as a visual representation of what is being said in different places about the same issue.
- The Twitter website itself is not the only (or main) way that users access or post updates to their Twitter accounts. The majority of Twitter access is via mobile devices (such as Twitter applications on the iPhone), third party desktop applications (such as TweetDeck or Thwirl), web browser plugins (such as Twitterfox) or widgets on personalised homepages (such as iGoogle, Pageflakes or Netvibes).
- People often like to include photos and videos in their messages using third party add-ons, such as TwitPic.
- Your Twitter updates can also be integrated with your other social media profiles. For example, you can use Twitter to edit your Facebook status and show your Twitter updates on your blog, if you have one.
If you want to delve a bit further into using Twitter for business have a look at this great introduction by a company called Hub Spot. Download the pdf.