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My first week on Twitter

12065792511036325169gerald_g_chick_4_svg_medI finally signed up to Twitter last week, and have found it to be a very interesting exercise. I’ll admit that I didn’t really see the point of it initially. It had been described to me as being like the status updates on facebook, and although I enjoy reading my friend’s facebook updates, I didn’t see the point of reading updates from 100s of people around the world, even if they do happen to be famous.

What no one explained to me was what a good marketing tool it is. Since signing up I have found lots of great articles on the Internet, which I would otherwise have missed. This is because the great people I’m following on Twitter will send a message out whenever they find a post worth reading. I haven’t done this yet myself, as I’m a bit unsure of the etiquette. Is it OK to just tweet about any site I happen to find interesting? Or should I get their permission first?

I know that Twitter automatically converts urls which are over 30 characters to Tiny ones. Should I convert all the web-links I tweet into tiny ones, or only if they are too long?

I’ve heard about Twitter spam, but haven’t come across any yet. Has anyone had a spam problem there yet?

I have also learnt some new words. Did you know that a twoosh is a 140 character tweet? Or that a tweep is someone who follows you on twitter?  I have found this Twitter Dictionary really useful, as there are so many new words to discover.

I’ve enjoyed my first week, but am pleased that I am showing no signs of addiction to it. I just check it once or twice a day, and find it to be a great blogging tool, rather than the enjoyable waste of time I expected it to be.

My Twitter user name is farmlanebooks. If you’re a twitter user then you are welcome to follow me – I’ll try to add more useful tweets in the future. If you’re not yet signed up, then I recommend you give it a try, as it is not at all how I expected it to be.

Remember the Comment of the Week Competition! I’m looking forward to reading your comments!

14 replies on “My first week on Twitter”

I just share any cool links that I find. I think the blog owners will be okay with it, since after all we are promoting them 😛 I’ve had a lot of spammers follow me, but as I never follow them back and their accounts are deleted pretty quickly, it’s not much of a problem.

I’m glad you’re enjoying Twitter!

Molly – thanks for following me! I’m now following you, and hopefully we’ll have mastered twitter very soon!

Nymeth – you are always good at finding great links – I have a look at most of the ones you suggest – thank you!

I think I’ve just encountered my fist spammer – he was following several thousand people, but only about 5 were following him. I put a block on them straight away!

I will enjoy Twitter vicariously through you! I figure by resisting Twitter, I will be banning myself to old-fogey status, but I’ll stick with my Facebook. I figure if I wait long enough, something else will take over the world soon enough!

Sandy – I’m sure something else will take over the world soon! but I think you should give it a try. It doesn’t take up very much time (unless you want it to!) but it has been great in promoting my blog. All I’ve been doing so far is going on everytime I update my blog, and posting a link to my latest post. It is amazing how many people out there are searching twitter, as I have had quite a few new people coming to comment on here.

It is also great for finding interesting things, but this does take up time, and you may want to avoid this side of it at the moment, but for the blog promotion, taking just a couple of secinds each day it is well worth it. Don’t feel as though I’m pressuring you though! It is totally up to you – I just wanted to explain it a bit, so you know exactly what you’re missing!

Just post any ole link you’d like! I love Twitter and feel that I’ve gotten to know people a lot better through it. I have also used it for business by using DM (direct message). It is a great marketing tool and social tool. As with anything, you get out of it what you put into it. One thing is to stay around for at least a half hour or so at a time so that you can tweet thing and people can answer and you join in or start a conversation.

Beth- Thanks for the great advice – my computer is on virtually all day – so I don’t have any problems with sticking around for half an hour!

Yes, go ahead and post any link you want, that’s part of the point! I will sometimes convert web links, if they make the tweet I am writing too long. Some twitter desktop client (I have TweetDeck but I don’t really like it) will do that for you. I have a few people following me that I don’t know, but I didn’t follow them back if their tweets looked spammy, so I haven’t really had a problem yet.

Welcome to Twitter 🙂

Kim – OK – I’ll have a bit of Twitter confidence, and post some more links! I’m going to have to look into things like TweetDeck. Are there lots of other similar things?

Can anyone recommend a better one than TweetDeck?

I signed up for Twitter months ago. Although, since I didn’t really know what I was doing and I didn’t really get the point of it, I stuck with it for all of two days before I quit. Perhaps I’ll give it another try. It has to be popular for a reason, right? 🙂

JS Peyton – Yes, you should give it another try – using it just to tell other people that you are having a ham sandwich for lunch isn’t very interesting, but if you use it to promote/find things on the Internet it is excellent!

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