Think of joining Twitter as going to a very large cocktail party by yourself. When you first walk into the room ( ie join twitter) you don't know anyone at all. So you start 'following' and chatting with a few people. Slowly your network grows. You find others who share the same interests as you and chat some more. If people want to find out more about you they can take a look at your twitter profile and read your bio or click through on your web address.
Think of it this way when you include links to your shop.. if you walked into a room and people shouted at you from all sides 'by me' our 'check me out', what would you do?
My success with Twitter has been to consider it a very large chat room. Its all about making the contacts. Once the contacts have been made then people will buy!
If you are just starting out, the following definitions might be of some help:
tweet - the act of posting something on twitter. This is the single most important thing that will affect whether or not twitter is right for you
followers - are people who read your tweets
following - are the people whos tweets you read
@username - a message directed to a specific person that can be seen by everyone
DM - direct message - these are completely private
What do I tweet about?
As was mentioned earlier, think of twitter as a large cocktail party. If you are at a party and the person next to you continued to tell you over and over how and where to buy their products, would you hang around very long? No, I didn't think so. On the other hand, if the only thing they told you was that they got up and had bacon and eggs, then went for a walk you wouldn't hang around much either. The key to twitter is to post things that are interesting to you or that you feel might be interesting to others. Did someone tell you a great joke? Post it! Did you find something really cool on the internet? then post that link.
Conversely, if someone posts something that you found interesting, then tell them! Its all about making contact. You may even want to follow their tweets!
How do you find people to follow? One of the best methods I've found is to use the 'search' function on the right sidebar. Pick a topic you are interested in. If you see someone who sounds interesting, follow them! If someone makes you laugh, send them an @message!
One very useful twitter Resource I've found is Twitter 101 for business
The power of twitter is there... just harness it to its full potential.
I tweet at http://twitter.com/crochetgal !
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11 years ago
14 comments:
Great article! The bacon and eggs thing on twitter is an inside joke! I have no idea who started it, but it's just for kicks.
Now I know why I disliked Twitter so much I opted out...I detest cocktail parties!
I agree, the cocktail party analogy got my anxiety up! But great intro to twitter, thanks!
I am sure I took the wrong turn with Twitter by using one of those Auto follow sites. There is no way you could follow a conversation with all these people doing self-promotion by Tweeting. It is insane.
Guessing I should perhaps start all over from scratch and only follow those who I can relate to.
I don't think having a lot of followers is necessarily a good thing if there is no relevance.
aweseome intro to twitter :)
another app that i like to use is twitrobot.com I set around 10 automatic tweets to be tweeted throughout the day mine is set for every 3 hours that way my followers can retweet me & can tweet me they're links so @ the end of the day i can log in & check out all the blogs & new items people tweet me :)
mine are set @ simple things like i love etsy do you? tweet me your shop & i'll check it out & i will leave my link too
its very convient
Excellent post! I like your analogy to the cocktail party. My own analogy is that Facebook reminds me of high school. I guess that's why I like Twitter and not Facebook!
Thanks for the great post. For some reason I'm petrified of Twitter. Maybe I'll just have to suck it up and give it a try. Hopefully I can use it on dial up.
Hmm. I guess the reason I like Facebook better than Twitter is that on FB it's easier for me to find people I already know (search by HS, Univ, job, etc), and on Twitter I'm having trouble trying to find a way to jump into the conversation without feeling like I'm being rude! I guess I'll have to continue working on it :/
Great intro! I quite like twitter- I actually find it really easy to get connected with my favorite bloggers and sellers because it's all so immediate. E-mail and blog comments get lost in the sea but a quick tweet seems to break through the chatter.
OK, I think I am going to try it... slight hesitation here.
But I do love a party, expecially one I can attend from home ~ LOL.
100 Thanks to U Crochetgirl for the blog~ answered a lot of Q's I had. Just blogged today asking for info on tweeting. LOL should have just went to your site asap!
THANKS
Thanks... very useful post! I just broke down and joined (missyellowfish), but am still figuring out the ropes!
Great suggestions. I think I'm going to have fun with Twitter!
This is good! but how can I follow you on twitter? mine is @CarlaGrifo
Great Post! Thank You!
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