Finding value in Twitter

Twitter is a “micro-blogging” application that allows you to share, in real-time, pretty much anything you like. Want to share an article of interest? “Tweet” it through the app and it’s out there for all to see. Sounds fun, but is it valuable?

Twitter works because of the relationships you build. You “follow” people you’re interested in and others follow you back. The more people you follow, the more information you’re exposed to. It’s therefore crucial to find what’s valuable and what isn’t.

Many Twitter users feel that growing your network is the most important thing you can do and it’s true that having more followers will get you more exposure. But there’s no value in simply being popular for the sake of it. It’s an ego boost, sure, but not necessarily valuable.

Twitter allows the instant sharing of information and this makes it useful and powerful. I couldn’t care less that you have 5,000 followers, or 10,000 or 100,000. If your tweets don’t give me something useful and relevant, I’m not going to follow you. I am as fond of Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) as the next guy, but I don’t need to know everything that’s on his mind.

I follow

When I joined Twitter, I initially followed people I’d previously been following through their blogs, mainly other web designers. This provided a good initial pool of connections, but surprisingly these “tweeters” weren’t putting out tweets that I found valuable. Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman) for example (one of the earliest web designers, with a devout following) doesn’t tweet much that interests me – his is a more personal twitter feed than related to web design. Do I keep following him simply because he’s Zeldman? Of course not, that’s pointless. If I’m not getting value from what he’s saying, then I’ll stop listening.

Similarly, Julia Roy (@juliaroy) has a massive following of around 25,000 people. A social media guru, she undoubtedly knows her stuff, but after following her for a few days, there wasn’t anything in her twitter stream that really piqued my interest, so I stopped following.

Both Jeffrey and Julia are undoubtedly wonderful people in real life, of course, and this isn’t an observation on them as people. I’m simply observing that the information they are putting out on Twitter has no value to me personally.

In fact, people that I’ve never heard of are often the most useful to follow. Grace Smith (@gracesmith), a web designer from Ireland, became known to me via a previous twitter connection. In the two weeks I’ve been on Twitter, she’s proved to be one of the nicest people to follow, for two reasons: #1: she’s friendly and welcoming and #2: she posts links to things related to web design that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. These might not be valuable to you, so you wouldn’t necessarily follow her, but for me? Priceless.

You follow

On the flip side, why should you follow me? Some Twitter etiquette seems to suggest that you should follow everyone that follows you, but I disagree.

I’ve had some automatic follows from people I’m following. I accept that it’s polite to follow people who have followed you, but I’m not going to worry if you decide to “un-follow” me if I’m not saying something that is valuable to you. You need to decide if what I’m saying is worthwhile, don’t just follow me for the sake of increasing your numbers. I find it pretty absurd that there are now apps to tell you when someone un-follows you so that you might un-follow them back! Crazy, huh?

I know that if I’m to be valuable I need to tweet interesting and useful information. After two weeks on Twitter, I now understand how I might tie this is with my blog. I haven’t sent out much original material yet, but I will be doing so as I get into my stride on Twitter and return to blogging more frequently.

Re-tweets

Re-tweeting is taking someone’s existing tweet and posting it again. Etiquette states that you should always include the original author when you re-tweet. For example, David Airey (@davidairey), a graphic designer from Northern Ireland, said today:

Twitter is not a competition — http://tinyurl.com/7q7899

I re-tweeted this as:

RT @davidairey:Twitter is not a competition —http://tinyurl.com/7q7899 – I completely agree: popularity does not equal value.

The link is useful and re-tweeting it extends its reach to people in my network that might not be in David’s. But I also add an extra small bit of value by adding my own perspective. Of course you don’t need to do this, but if space allows I think personalising a re-tweet can be useful.

Follow Friday

Follow Friday is a great way to share recommendations on who to follow. Every Friday, tweeters are invited to share the names of people that might benefit the followers in their network. For example, a typical Follow Friday tweet might look like this:

#followfriday: @RichardLaksana @webupd8 @fotofacade @phaoloo @sharonhayes @derFrankie @bnrbranding @designsojourn

This is a really nice way of recommending people, but I find it a bit impersonal. I’ve noticed that other tweeters prefer to only do 2 or 3 names each Follow Friday, and add some personal information to each. I think this is far more valuable that simply dumping ten names into one tweet. For example, I posted this one today:

#followfriday: @laura_carlson Accessibility advocate and provider of great links about accessible web design. Highly recommended.

I think that’s much more useful and it also received a nice reply from Laura—and that’s where real value lies too: establishing conversations.

Conversations

I think the real value in Twitter really is very simple: conversations. Whether those conversations are with your customers, with prospective clients or with your peers, you can never underestimate the opportunities that come from engaging with people.

Make the first move, talk to people and see what happens. I’ve been surprised by Twitter, maybe you will be too?

Summary

  • Follow people who are discussing subjects that interest you
  • Un-follow anyone who’s not delivering anything useful
  • Don’t follow people simply for the sake of it, or simply because they are “popular” or famous, unless they genuinely have some value to you
  • Retweet useful links to widen their reach, but remember to credit the original tweeter
  • Publish interesting information, in particular original content not already tweeted by your network
  • Search twitter for “#followfriday” to find recommendations on good people to follow
  • Establish conversations – real opportunities come from talking to people. Now there’s a thought!

So those are my initial thoughts on finding value in Twitter; I hope you found it helpful.

Tags: Networking, Social Media, Twitter