This is the first post in a four-post series, “Twitter 101.” Post #2 is about signing up for your Twitter account and post #3 is about searching and finding people and topics on Twitter. Not a day goes by that I don’t hear or read at least one — usually a lot more — complaints, questions, and skeptical statements from non-Twitter users. Sometimes the complaints come from friends, either of the online or “real world” variety (not that I don’t consider my online buddies to be something other than “real”!), and some come from well-known writers or celebrities.
The Pushback From Solos on Twitter
None of these complaints, I’ve noticed with some interest, really has any form or structure to the objection. Rather, the protests usually boil down to:
I just don’t get it.
This isn’t as pointless an objection as it might seem at first blush to Twitter fans. To me, it makes sense that solos, in particular, who typically face schedules that would make a White House staffer go cross-eyed, would hesitate to throw anything else into the mix, particularly when the thing is a newish technology of uncertain value. So, to all the “I just don’t get it” folks out there (and yes, I’m even talking to you, Maureen Dowd), I’m here this week to attempt to explain it and demonstrate it to you.
Twitter 101: Helping Lawyers and Other Solos “Get It”
All this week, I’m going to be posting exclusively about Twitter (except for the regular Friday Brief, of course). This Twitter 101 series is a leadup to the debut of our first TIS ebook title: Res Ipsa Tweet: The Twitter Guide for Lawyers, which will be available for sale and immediate download this Sunday, May 3, 2009 (fingers crossed). Today’s post is an introduction to the introduction, of sorts — an explanation of what Twitter is, why it’s probably not what you think it is, how it can be useful, and why at a minimum you should give it a month-long tryout even if you think it’s stupid and annoying, as Maureen Dowd clearly does. (But you’re way smarter than Maureen. I’m pretty sure you’ll get it.)
Once and For All: What Is Twitter, Really?
Twitter is by definition a microblogging platform. This means that users send out messages or content in a one-to-many format much like blogging, but in contrast to blogging, the content is length-restricted to a maximum of 140 characters, spaces included.
Twitbit: How did Twitter come up with the 140-character limit? It originated from the standard 160-characer limit for cell phone text messages. Twitter developers figured they’d add in 20 characters to account for user names and voila! 140 characters left over for tweets. Now you know.
It is my sneaking suspicion that a lot of the pushback on Twitter comes from … Twitter itself, which still markets itself with the now-eye-rollingly-outdated “What are you doing right now?” question. This, Twitter says, is what it’s meant to do: let your friends and family members know where you are and what you’re doing right this very minute. Like all good apps and sites, what it was originally conceived to be got shoved out of a moving vehicle doing 120mph + down the Autobahn portion of the Information Superhighway. What it is has been completely shaped by its rapidly-swelling user base. Nowadays, Twitter is much more than a place to exchange such banal details of daily life. Such tweets (Twitter messages) do, of course, occur. But tweeters (Twitter users) who post only such information find themselves unfollowed (their tweets ignored) in a hurry, by all except those socially bound to follow them, such as their mothers.
What’s So Interesting About Twitter?
These days, Twitter success is determined by a few more sophisticated criteria:
- Are you interesting? Do you say interesting things, and share interesting stuff?
- Are you a spammer? (Automatic follow-fail. I’ll explain the “fail” thing in tomorrow’s post.)
- Are you completely in love with yourself to the exclusion of all else? (More a subset of question #1 because, really, there aren’t many more qualities that make a person less interesting to most of us than an overabundance of self-adoration.)
- Do you yammer on endlessly, or otherwise make too much “noise” on the site? (Again – sort of an extension of #1.)
So, really, I guess, it all boils down to: Are your tweets interesting? Spam = uninteresting and evil. Self-obsessed tweets = uninteresting and offensive. Excessive noise = uninteresting and annoying. Object lesson, thus: Be interesting. (And don’t be evil.) Consider some of these well known tweets:
- American student James Karl Buck had time to tweet just one word to his followers on Twitter when he was scooped up by Egyptian authorities and thrown into a Cairo jail cell: “Arrested.” His college then was able to hire a lawyer for him and help him get out.
- When the Chinese earthquake hit earlier this year, Twitter users were the first and in many cases best informed.
- When the huge wildfire broke out less than 20 miles from my home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last week, Twitter users kept each other updated on road closings, school closings, and dangerous conditions much more quickly than the local paper could update its own stories online. It eventually dedicated a page on its site to tweets about the fire.
I refuse on principle to discuss Ashton Kutcher or Oprah or Hugh Jackman (though I did participate in the latter’s charity-tweet-a-thon on behalf of Heifer International — alas, we lost). I can, however, heartily recommend @StephenFry
.
Using Twitter to Market Legal or Other Professional Services
Well and good, you may say, but what about useful stuff, like, say, marketing my solo law firm/accounting firm/real estate broker services/consulting services? Can Twitter be useful for busineses as well as interesting and useful for individuals? In a word, maybe. It depends, as do all marketing tools, on how it’s used and — maybe primarily — on how well the user adapts to the forum, instead of demanding the forum adjust to the user. Like any community, Twitter has developed rules of conduct and accepted modes of intercourse. Violate these rules at your own peril, especially if you have a business purpose in mind. Luckily, the rules are pretty informal and mostly common sense.
- Don’t tweet too often. (Shouldn’t be a problem for most solos who are probably wondering how to work Twitter usage into their day at all.)
- Don’t spam.
- Don’t tweet too much about yourself.
- Be useful and interesting.
How does this help lawyers or other service professionals? I see several different avenues of utility for solos and small professional firms. First and foremost, there’s the fact that Twitter provides an immediate communication channel between you and _________________ (fill in the blank with the name of any group you’re trying to reach). That immediacy and clarity is a powerful and one-of-a-kind opportunity to control your message. Second, there’s the unparalleled opportunity to expand your circle (or, if you prefer the word, network). Think of all the potential referral sources you’d like to connect with. Some of them, at least, are on Twitter. If you’re on Twitter — and you “get it” — that’s a powerful boost to your credibility and rank with each of those sources (assuming they, too, “get it”). Third, Twitter provides a solid and fairly reliable way to monitor your brand’s online reputation. Individuals are more likely to tell other Twitter users what they really think in a tweet, than a blog post, for instance. Whereas most formal avenues of complaint are more like writing a letter to the customer service department and dropping it in the mail, Twitter is more akin to fuming out loud to your spouse or roommate how much you hate Comcast (to pick but one beleagured company not known for its fabulous customer service). That last point deserves further illustration, and we’ll start with Comcast for the very reason that it is so maligned in the online community for its abysmal response to customer complaints. Rebecca from SEOMoz Blog wrote about her experience with Comcast’s Twitter account, and its outcome was a far cry from the resolution she got with the telephone call she’d placed to the same company:
While I had been chatting with Not At All Helpful Comcast Rep on the phone, I happened to Twitter the following:
To my surprise, after I hung up and was gearing up to unleash some major Comcast hate all over the Internet, I received this response:
I responded to ComcastBill in 3 tweets, relaying what happened within the confines of 140 characters. Meanwhile, a number of my Twitter buddies rallied in support of my cause . . .After some back and forths with ComcastBill, I gave him my account information and he was quiet for a bit. After a while, he privately messaged me with this:
Needless to say, I was once again a happy happy Comcast customer.
Now, of course, this level of dispute and resolution isn’t likely to occur too often in the world of small and solo professional services firms — your clients are much likelier to simply pick up the phone and rant. But it demonstrates the quickness of the Twitter user to vent on Twitter, and the immediate power to respond and resolve such disputes before they become out of hand. Finally, there’s the education factor. Pick the right mix of people to follow and you’ll get smarter, not just about your own profession but about your clients, their problems, the solutions that exist for them, self-improvement, productivity, time management, and life in general. In any given day I learn about four or more fascinating blog posts that I would otherwise never have read, a potentially valuable treatment for chronic pain (which I’ve dealt with on a daily basis for over ten years now), and a handful of incredibly clever computer hacks that make my life much easier. And not one “I had a sandwich for lunch” tweet among them.
Upcoming in the Twitter 101 Series
Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the basics of Twitter: setting up your account and filling in your bio.
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