Have You Heard of Twitter?

Hello Million Friends,

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Twitter is a popular “Web 2.0 Social Media, Social Networking, Microblogging” tool that allows you 140 characters to answer that questions, “What are you doing?” Web 2.0 is some of the latest stuff happening on the web. Heck, I didn’t even know there was a Web 1.0 or they even categorized things on the web like that.

Apparently “Social Media or Social Networking” are terms used when you’re, well, socializing with folks on the web. I know it encompasses a lot more but I like to simplify things to keep my head on straight.

Is There Any Goodness in Twitter?

Whether to promote yourself, your business, learn stuff or just hang out and converse with people you don’t know, but will eventually come to know, Twitter can be addicting but also serve as an excellent tool in your arsenal of self-promotion/marketing tools, if you so desire. The key here is that you “eventually come to know” folks which is the same as building relationships that can benefit you and them in many ways.

You can touch gods. Ok not really, but it brings you closer to some of the folks you admire, read about, and hear about. You get a first-hand audience with some of these folks who have a wealth of knowledge in your field or some other field.

Mind Set

With Web 2.0, I think it helps to change your mind set when using all this stuff. When you first start using Twitter, it feels like another IM (Instant Messaging – Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, etc.) but it’s not so personal as an IM and it doesn’t have to be.

I prefer to think of it as being in one big conference room (or just a big room – make up your own environment) with people from all over the world in the room.

Whether you roam around the conference room (Twitter), chatting (tweets as they’re known) about something in common, meeting new people, or marketing your wares, talking about friends, family and kids, Twitter seems to have endless uses.

Follow

You don’t have to just follow people in your niche only. For instance, I don’t have to follow and converse with just artists. There might be people in that world-wide conference room that includes some of the following, and I might be interested in them as well:

• Writers
• eMoms
• eDads
• Pro Bloggers
• Real Estate Agents
• eBook Experts
• Art Marketers
• Art Enthusiasts
• Art Students
• Art Teachers
• World Travelers
• Web Page Designers
• Interior Designers
• Business Bloggers
• The Owner of Digg
• On and on and on…

Meaningless Information

Now, some folks might think, “Why would I want to hear about what people on Twitter are eating or when they’re going to bed?” You might think that’s foolishness but you really end up creating relationships and those relationships can benefit you as well as the other tweeters. And yes, you end up interested in what some folks are eating especially if you’re into Juicing like me, or into eating new foods that are organic.

So what should be your first tweet after joining twitter? “Hi, my name’s Teri Tweeter and I’m a Tweetalcoholic.” It can be a simple introduction, just like you would do if you were standing in front of somebody. People usually respond very well. Talk normal as if you’re at that conference, meeting new people at the dinner table or sitting at the local coffee shop talking to new people.

Other Outcomes

Some other outcomes for folks using twitter include:

• Gaining new clients for business (free eBook)
• Brian Clark of CopyBlogger held a contest to see how people can write something in exactly 140 characters. This was a blast to follow and read when it all took place. Check it out and see for yourself. That one blog post generated over 600 comments. A great and fun read.
• Recipes in 140 characters. Source: ArtBizBlog
• Articles that are brought to your attention without evening trying to look for them yourself. It’s kind of like having your own world-wide research team.
• There’s a goldmine in those tweets. Can’t use Google to search all those Twitter Tweets? Not to worry, browse over to Summize (Summize is a search engine for Twitter) and go to town on searching Twitter. Don’t forget about their Advanced Search. Maybe you missed your replies in the last 24 hours, you can put in @ plus your username and see what you’ve missed, or any username and find the replies to that person.
• Another cool trick with Summize is searching on the TinyURL that Twitter creates. If you want to find out who’s talking about that url in someone’s tweet just copy and paste the TinyURL into Summize search box and you’ll see the results. By the way, TinyURL is a way to shrink the long URLs (web address) in Twitter so you don’t run out of 140 characters wasted on a URL. Which brings me to…
• Wondering if someone is tweeting about a particular blog post? Copy and paste the blog post long URL you’r interested in, into TinyURL and create a tiny url for that blog post. Then copy the tiny url into Summize search box and see what comes up. TinyURL seems to remember long URLs that have been “tiny-ized”. Pretty darn cool.
• On and on and on…

More Resources

There are numerous resources on Twitter including blog post articles to a bazillion Twitter applications for you to use with Twitter. I’ll let you do the searching and reading but here are a few to get you going.

Newbie’s guide to Twitter by Webware

5 Ways to Find More Friends on Twitter by ReadWriteWeb

The Big Juicy Twitter Guide by Caroline Middlebrook

Here’s a great video on Twitter. If you don’t see the embedded video below please let me know in the comments. Also, here’s the actual link to the video just in case you need to go directly to it – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

Yes, it’s pretty cool stuff and time consuming so watch out.

If you join Twitter, here is my Twitter username and feel free to follow me and I’ll follow you – http://twitter.com/Christerical

Feel free to share your twitter username in the comments so everyone can follow each other.

Tweet you later Tweet-hearts, when we can play Tweet-Tac-Toe. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Now go play!!

Pray for Peace,

Chris