Home Business Guide on How NOT to use Twitter:
So I’m on Twitter today (are you following me on Twitter yet? Areyouareyouareyou?) and I get an email notifying me of a new follower. In many cases I just follow back, but I wouldn’t know this guy if I woke up in bed beside him, so I went to investigate.
He doesn’t know me, he just lives in my city and found me on one of the local apps. Anyway, his most recent tweet goes like this:
“Twitter isn’t a chat client. I don’t follow people with too many @ symbols. They don’t know what Twitter is really for.”
True enough. I had to unfollow one very prominent SEO chick for filling my entire page with chats smack in the middle of primetime. Not cool. OK, so I check him out a little further. (I am not, after all, a complete Twitter whore. I will follow a lot of people, but a gal’s gotta draw the line somewhere.)
Finished my exam. Heading home. about 6 hours ago
Changed my mind. Stopping at Starbucks. about 6 hours ago
Tomatoes on sale. about 5 hours ago
Home now. about 5 hours ago
Quick how-to lesson for you home business Twitter newbies out there: Don’t fucking do that.
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Next Post: Moral of the Story: Cool Kids Edition
OK, so what is the “correct” way to use twitter?
“Quick how-to lesson for you newbies out there: Don’t fucking do that.”
Toughlove at its finest - and the reason I follow so few people. I’m not elitist … I just choose to filter by relevance.
@ Vered — Well, from a business standpoint, it doesn’t pay to be boring. It also doesn’t pay to trash people involved in interesting conversations with other people who might be equally interesting, and then turn out to be talking about a sale on tomatoes yourself. Even ‘Tomatoes on sale — I eat too many tomatoes’ or ‘Tomatoes on sale — guess what I’m having for dinner’ gives a little bit more of a glimpse into the life of the writer, IMO.
@ Dave — Oh, yes I did. :-)
Thanks. I’m not on twitter yet, but when I succumb and join, I will know better than to be boring. :)
Don’t reply to someone on Twitter but forget to reply. Nobody wants to hear your one-sided conversation. I hate that.
AHH, IttyBiz, you make me happy! Right you are; GO w/the tough love. Remarkablogger hits the @ on the keyboard.. I love it when it’s used within a tweet so I can see that the person worth being tweeted about is on Twitter & look them up. In any conversation tho’, DO keep it ‘@’ the beginning of your tweet so that those of use who filter out replies to those of you we don’t follow won’t get extraneous tweets. ^_^
|_|) “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
PS: THANX for recognizing (in the “Wanted: One Psychic PA, Lousy Pay” comments) that the font on my blog *was* meant to be a bold design move; the irony being I’ve been slowly but surely changing it over to ‘Georgia’ & the like. Tho’ts?
Hehehe… too funny. And I have nothing wittier to say because I woke up late, haven’t had coffee, am facing another day with no daycare and I’m behind on my schedule. Wit needs a relaxed environment with no stress.
I don’t agree that your “tomato guy” shouldn’t do that. He’s using Twitter for what it was originally intended for: keeping in touch.
Though not to the same detail, I use Twitter the same way - for example to say that I’ll be out of the office for the day. I pull my Tweets into my web site, so notices like that also appear there, letting customers know that I won’t answer my email with my usual alacrity.
OK, “Tomatoes on sale” was a little weak and pointless.. Never mind, forget I said anything.
@ Tony — You know, I think you’re right to a degree. And maybe if he hadn’t sought me out as a total stranger I wouldn’t have acted so strongly. For all I know, his followers all live in his dorm and actually WANT to know about the local tomato sale. Maybe in front of his audience, it provides value.
Agreed, Naomi and Tony. If someone wants to give mundane life updates, they should probably just follow/be followed by people they know in real life. Or their moms.
I’m a brand new Twitterer, but I read a few pages of people’s tweets before I decide to follow them to get a general idea of their style.
It’s also annoying if every. single. tweet. is a link to a blog post.
Ok, my opinion is that everyone should use Twitter the way they want and what is best for them. If they want to tell people that they are picking there nose, great! I probably won’t follow them but thats their prerogative.
I personally like the conversation aspect, as well as the personal updates, but that person doesn’t. If you don’t like what he says unfollow!
I also think the “random” add was an effort to follow more local twitterers, I follow a lot of people from around the world and a bunch of people local to me too. I like the having both communities in my list. Just my two cents, Thanks!
Sorry, last sentence got cut off.
A little self-promotion is great, but it has to be mixed with the random funny comments and observations.
@Tony You’re right, Tomato Guy’s use is pretty much exactly what Twitter’s original point was. “What are you doing?” Heading home. “What are you doing?” Looking at tomatoes. (Well, it’s implied.)
This does point out the dual nature/use of Twitter that has arisen: personal Twitter vs. professional Twitter. Strictly personal Twitter accounts will include mundane stuff like this. Professional Twitter accounts won’t. Or might, in more professional context: “Found sale tomatoes at market. Bewildered by nearly illegible sign and placement next to apples.”
Or maybe the professional account would include mundane stuff like this, reenforcing for the people “meeting” on sites like this the humanity behind the blog posts and comments.
Gets back to context. James Chartrand telling us about tomatoes on sale wouldn’t seem all that out of place (though this doesn’t strike me as the kind of thing James would tweet), but random Tomato Guy doing it does.
(FWIW, you can follow my “professional” tweets at http://twitter.com/LaptopForHire . And, yes, Naomi, IamIamIam following you!)
@ No-one in particular — Well, that’s the funny thing about Twitter, and macrocosmically, blogging. For some, it’s personal. For others, not. The people who read this blog are ittybiz owners, or want to be. They’ve read Remarkablogger and MwP talk about Twitter and business. They see how fantastic it is for networking and, to a degree, marketing. They want in.
To those people, I recommend they don’t be Tomato Guy. Tomato Guy isn’t hurting anybody, and he can tweet about cat puke if he wants. But for ittybiz owners who have read the hype and want a piece of it, Tomato Guy is not the guy to emulate.
Hey, don’t limit yourself. :) I read you and I’m not an ittybiz owner. Okay, maybe I secretly want to be, but I like your perspective on work and life, and I think your writing and advice have a wide application. Also, you just used the word macrocosmically.
I want someone to create a Twitter account that says “I want my $2.00!” ever two hours or so. Call it NewspaperDeliveryKid or something.
That would be a bit more interesting than your victim’s tweets.
“everyone should use Twitter the way they want”
What? Individual choice? We can’t have that.
Next thing we’ll all be blogging about whatever the hell we want instead of the official subject d’jour .. and THEN where will we be?
Oddly enough, “tomatoguy” just started following me. Is that *your* tomato guy? Doesn’t look like it, but I just can’t believe that this is not somehow related to this post and its comments..
@ Tony — Yes, he’s somehow related. I got a follow notification, too, and laughed my fool ass off. Don’t know who he is — probably Kevin Rose incognito — but I have a feeling he hangs out here when he’s not shopping for tomatoes.
I’ve run into that problem with twitter - I don’t do enough interesting stuff to warrant the personal stories, but I don’ do enough professional stuff related to twitter to be worth a damn. So I lurk and jump on random conversations…
But agreed about twitter chatter. I’ve had to unfollow some people just because they said too damned much and were drowning out other conversations that were really interesting. Balance is key.
Oh, and IAM, IAM, IAM following you.
Twitter is great. Use it the way you want to. If you don’t like how someone else uses it don’t follow them.
My use is a mixture of personal updates, conversations, questions to the big wide world and swearing about how shit the trains are.
Hmm, I disagree completely that twitter isn’t a chat mechanism - it clearly is being used that way. In fact, I would say the popularity of twitter is based on the chatting, not on the people doing status updates alone.
However, do those people complaining about the chatter know that you can turn off all @replies to people not on your list? So you will only see the status updates.
Some people just say too damn much anyway - I’ve dropped a few people because they were just filling my stream without adding enough to be worth it. But that’s not relevant to whether it started with an @ or not.
(@akasylvia)
Wow, I feel like one of the cool kids now! Tomatoguy is following me, too.
For me, the best stuff’s in the @s. It’s how I find new people to follow, and it’s the part that I find most interesting. But it’s helpful if you try to think of each tweet as being worth reading whether or not someone clicks through to see the other half of the convo.
I admire Merlin Mann’s tweets, which stand perfectly alone and are often amazing, but I still prefer conversations.
For me, Twitter is a series of giant intersecting water coolers. I didn’t think I would like it at all, and I like it very much.
@sonia: “intersecting water coolers”
An explanation well worth stealing.. :-)
Twitter asks the wrong question “What are you doing?” Any attempt to answer to this question is bound to be pretty boring. Heck, I can only think of “just chilling” in answer. :(
Seriously, I’d love Twitter to ask us a euphemised version of “rant your heart out you boring old loner!”. ;)
I think making too many tweeter rules about can be said and what can’t just takes away all the fun.
Its like high school. Hang out with who you like. Say what you want. If someone doesn’t like it, you won’t be popular. It has its checks and balances. If Tomato Guy wakes up tomorrow and he is the most followed, then I guess talking tomatoes are suddenly ok.
I use it to get new info and to keep up with people I am interested in. I won’t follow randomly because I can’t keep up with it all. Once again, its personal preference. Other people like having hundreds…
It also makes a great replacement for your feed reader: http://blog.3hv.co.uk/2008/04/16/going-on-an-information-diet/
i am on the twitter and i follow and occasionally i get enough guts to type something. occasionally. and then i worry that it was ‘the wrong thing’ and that all um like 5 people who follow me will be annoyed. this is not productive LOL.
that said - i love RECEIVING the twitters! and just figure that eventually i will get better at it - maybe i just need to follow more people to get better examples i would like to emulate?
btw, saying ‘the twitters’ was sarcasim - i know it’s twitter/tweets. ahhh paranoia at it’s finest today…
The REAL problem is people using twitter for spam. They make it REAL obvious when someone is following 5k people, but only have maybe 10 or 20 follow back.
Oh yes, tomato guy is now following me too. I was wondering where he came from!
@kate
Saying the “wrong thing”?
Recently I made a political comment that I was certain would cause every one of my right wing followers to curse me and un-follow immediately. I know I have some right wing followers because I’ve read their blogs - no, I can’t imagine why they’d follow a liberal loony like me, but anyway, not one of them dropped. And that’s not the first anti-conservative tweet I have made (nor will it be the last).
So, my experience is that you can’t say the wrong thing.. or shouldn’t worry much about it, anyway.
You are so right! Although I keep having to remember that I can tweet using my mobile phone…
Oh, & by the way I’m now following you…mwah haha. (that’s me, juliaborg if you’re wondering. Always nice to find fellow Canadians on the board…)
You’ve been on twitter for 4 months and have decided to educate people on acceptable use?
@ Picard102 — Oh, I LOVE it when people who know neither me nor my business come to trash me on my own blog.
No, I didn’t write my doctoral thesis on Twitter. I do, however, make a pretty decent living coaching microbusiness owners on how to optimize their marketing, part of which is their online branding. Since you do branding, too, I think you’d probably agree that the example in question, while perfectly acceptable, isn’t exactly optimal.
Thanks for stopping by.
The example in question is obviously someone using the service for personal use, not a business application. Using a square peg for your round hole example is silly.
You’re quite right. I didn’t tell him HE shouldn’t tweet about tomatoes. I told my readers THEY shouldn’t tweet about tomatoes.
Enough people are saying they’ve heard the hype about Twitter and how it’s such an amazing marketing and networking tool, but they don’t get it. When they see Tomato Guy, followed by Every Tweet’s A Different Link Guy, (or worse, Every Tweet’s The Same Link Guy), followed by Famous Quote Per Day Guy, followed by @@@ Chatty Pants Guy, they’re confused. They hear it’s good for networking, they look, and wonder how that can be possible. I don’t blame them.
Fantastic! A great lesson, beautifully succinct and to the point, I really like that. Thank you!
I don’t do *that* but I am guilty of being an @woman! Still trying to get to grips with Twitter after a few weeks. I love it but am still not really sure what to do with it. Some lovely people follow me but I worry that there is nothing much in it for them. I feel guilty that I get so much and give so little in return!
Perhaps the problem is I follow lots of my heroes on there and feel a little out of their league (erm, actually, a lot!)
:o)
I am late to the game on this. But i just spent 30 minutes reading your posts and laughing my ass off. I have you on my sidebar and haven’t visited for months. My loss and shame. Promise to be more of a consistent reader.
I am totally winging it with Twitter. You and I know we talk about crunchy, gross food on the floor, mixed with scorpions.
I send links to interesting posts. And share random thoughts like “I want to go to a day spa for 3 days” or “why, if everyone wants a body and face like Pamela Anderson does she marry train wrecks?”
You know, critical, business focused topics.
I am sure that I am doing something for my brand. Causing “polarity,” as Guy Kawasaki says. Translation: those that thought they knew me are running screaming, and those that get to know the real me stay ’cause they are just a bit loonier than me.
But talk about tomatoes? Never.
Thanks for still following me, now that I said my followers are loonies. :)
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