Guest Blogger social media

Twitter 101 | Part 1

Guest Blogger Alert!

Adam - you rock. This dude, is smart. I had asked him if he could write up some goodness about twitter, since I'm twitter-stupid. ALAS. He has a 4 part series on it. By the 4th part we should be tweetin' (? is that the right lingo?!) up a storm!

Look Ma, I’m Twittering – Part One – Yo, What It Is

“I don’t know what this is or what it does” never really worked out positively for drugs, guns, heavy machinery, or politics. For whatever reason though, when it comes to Twitter, people just have an overwhelming urge to dive right in. It’s like examining a loaded gun, looking for the end where the bullet comes out.

Let’s start with some history. Twitter was invented by some geeks with really short attention spans. SQUIRREL!

Apparently, blog posts and Facebook status updates just require far too much time to read, so a tool was built where everyone could join in and share quick little tidbits of information. These little tidbits were relegated to a length of 140 characters, which is approximately the same number of characters you managed to read in any given college textbook.

What was the result? Basically an online version of a coffee shop where the entire world is invited to talk REALLY LOUD and share their opinions. Whoever is the loudest, has the most friends, says the trendiest stuff, etc, are the ones that get listened to.

Twitter defines Twitter as “An information network. Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. Simply find the public streams that you find most compelling and follow the conversations.” See, isn’t that simple?

By the way, that won’t fit in a tweet.

So you know what Twitter is. Now it’s time to learn how to use it.

First, you need to answer a question. Business, or personal? If it’s for personal use, just learn the basics (coming soon!), dive right in, and start annoying your friends, family and complete strangers. If you want to use it for business reasons, you should first try to answer some really difficult questions.

Like “Why do I want to use this?” or “What are my goals?” You can find a really helpful decision tree on my own blog, here.

Stay tuned for part two – The Basics. For people that don’t know what they’re doing. Or think they do, but really aren’t.

Follow Adam on Twitter! @dudeimbibes