Twitter is what you make of it.
So I’m frustrated by certain things when it comes to trying to convince some of my coworkers and small business folks to embrace the Power of Twitter. I wrote about that yesterday but in the comments, someone said that he is not finding very much of value when he uses his personal Twitter account. I’ll quote him:
Recently it seems more that I’m following a handful of famous people who interest me and it basically acts like another facebook status news feed, except for people who are too famous to be my friends on FB. I’m quite happy to accept that I’m doing it wrong, but I don’t really know how to do it right.
So, I thought I’d write about how I use Twitter – personally. I’ve talked about it benefits my newspaper, and I’ve gone on and on about how it can be a marvelous tool for any business. But I guess I haven’t really talked about how it can be used for fun as well.
Bear in mind, not everyone’s going to use it the way I do. Not everyone’s going to ever see any benefit to Twitter. Twitter is what you make of it. That’s my mantra. Twitter is what you make of it. But here are some ideas of how to make something fun and/or beneficial for anyone.
First, I have a lot of Twitter accounts. I mean, I have more than what is probably normal:
- @UKMelia – My Twitter account that is all for me to do with and mold how I please. I follow only those who interest me (several celebs, fan accounts from books/movies/shows I like etc.), family, and friends there, as well as people I work with on the Buffy/Angel Between the Lines audio dramas I participate in. The majority of my tweets here are also mostly to my boyfriend and my daughter. I don’t follow a ton of people here and I don’t have a big follower list either but this account is tailored exactly to what I like. I also keep this account locked because I am not interested in huge follower/following counts, and I can tweet what I like.
- @stephromanski – This is my professional account. I follow hundreds of smart, savvy journalists and news sources, some social media folk (I’m a bit choosy when it comes to that. I tend to prefer Social Media folk who work in my field, not the Marketing “Guru” folk because I’m not interested much in that.) I learn a lot from the people I follow here and it has been incredibly beneficial to me for sharing ideas, has expanded my interests and allowed me to network and meet others who enjoy the stuff I enjoy at work. The reason I keep separate personal/professional accounts is that this account is the one where no one gives a crap what I had for breakfast but on my UK account, my best friend might want the recipe for my awesome French Toast.
- @CherryPop and @LiamTheZombie – These are character accounts for a book I’m trying to write. I’m using Twitter to expand the ‘verse my characters inhabit. The project waxes and wanes, but I’m gearing up for NaNoWriMo with these guys so there will be more activity soon.
- @Doodurls – My pride and joy. My boyfriend and I created a website that solicits people Doodles, via Twitter mostly, and we run this account and the site together. These days, I think it’s almost essential that every venture like this should have a Twitter account and facebook fan page associated with it to help grow the audience.
- And then I have about 7 or 8 accounts for the paper that I manage.
When Twitter was still in the early stages, the idea for it was to allow a quick way for the cell phone generation to send quick messages to friends and family to stay connected, to allow them to answer the ‘What are you doing?’ question knowing only family and friends would be interested in that. Some people have turned their personal feeds into something humourous. They’ll post one-liners, or @shitmydadsays, or quirky observations. Some tweet inspirational messages. Some will actually tweet every minute detail of their lives not caring who wants to read that sort of thing. And believe it or not, there are people on Twitter who aren’t after huge follower numbers.
I’ll give an example of how I came to grok Twitter. Year and years ago I used to be an admin on a telnet MUD called The Chatting Zone. The admin had their own special channel to talk on and basically it became a place to spit out random thoughts in our heads. Anything from, “Good lord who told Posh Spice she should be wearing THAT outfit??” (Hey, I said this was years ago) to, “Well I’m about to cook spaghetti for dinner.” Lots of times even the most mundane, random stuff would become conversation starters. When Twitter came along, I immediately thought how similar it was to my old TCZ admin days and I discovered I kind of missed the random ramblings of my fellow admin.
It might be hard to not view Twitter as a stripped down version of the Facebook status updates. And for my commenter, Twitter might not ever be useful for him personally. I think, for personal accounts, it’s too subjective to say Twitter is superior to Facebook or vice versa. Twitter is what you make of it. Tailor your account to follow who interests you, throw in some friends and family, use trends and searches to jump into conversations that matter to you and you’ll meet more people.
And who knows, maybe you’ll care about what some of them had for breakfast.
