I HATE TWITTER MOST because it's a time sink. I have seen creative people succumb to mind-numbing sessions of day-long tweeting. They cede their cognitive awareness to the cloud and just hang out and tweet their friends all day. Some people don't know they've been infected and so they ramble on and on in search of nirvana that others suggest lies north of 20,000 tweets and a half million followers. It's all a waste of time and energy, unless you make Twitter work for you. I make Twitter work the news and I watch the reaction while logged onto Seesmic Desktop under one of three different Twitter nicknames. This work practise annoys several of the chirpiest tweeple in the Irish twitterspace, especially those who think people can only be one persona. Those social media theorists would not approve of an online personality that's different from their meet-up personality and they certainly wouldn't feel comfortable acting a part on a stage. No matter--I rarely follow community values simply because someone wants to impose them. I validate my actions by drawing my own conclusions and although most of the time the result makes me a conformist, it's conformity by personal resolution, not by tribal mores.
But I digress. I wanted to talk about using Twitter to work the news.
Smart Queries Make Smart Work. I listen to different key terms as they arise on Twitter, then occasionally join those conversations on Twitter and on blogs. Since Twitter has reached critical mass for me, I can see terms of reference emerge on the Twitter public timeline faster than they emerge on Techmeme, Google Alerts (through blog search), or Electric Search. And by engaging in a short-form conversation when I spot those terms arise, I can influence behaviours. I have helped people book hotels in Ireland, persuaded people to walk around my local architectural wonder, and influenced American tourists as they planned their drive around Ireland. All these things happened within the space of a few minutes on Twitter as I watched my smart queries throw up results.
Breaking News as Tweets. I'm working with The Nationalist, a local paper in County Tipperary, in how they're engaging on Twitter. In the first working weeks, a staff member at The Nationalist just snips and posts headlines. The tones of those tweets will change as the summer unfolds, leading to meaningful online conversations as a result.
Daily Updates as Tweets. I supervise third level students during their summertime work experience programmes. Asking each of those students to tweet their daily reports and aggregating the result is an easy way to scrape and create a required end-of-tour document. Moreover, a tweet is really close to a 12 Second update (mine shown here).
I've two other tactics that have proved useful in making Twitter work for me but I've also three direct messages that have arrived in the space of me typing this blog post so I'm feeding my twitaddiction by responding to the direct message alerts that are flashing on the bottom of my screen. I remain yours truly, topgold on Twitter.
Bonus Link: Neville Hobson -- "Twitter is for listening"
Previously: Twitter Triggers My Anti-Spam Alerts
