Ineffective Twitter tips

When Twitter was first introduced, I thought it sounded incredibly stupid. Who cares if Ashton Kutcher just ate a sandwich? As covered yesterday, it can be a lot more than that. Twitter has exposed me to more comics, and it has exposed me to more music.

One really great thing has been how it helps me find good news articles. I started by just following a handful of writers that I liked. This included David Cay Johnston, Paul Krugman, Leonard Pitts, Nicholas Kristof, and Joe Conason. They all have different levels of activity on Twitter, but in addition to seeing columns of theirs that perhaps my paper did not run, or seeing their columns sooner, they would also post interesting articles they had read, or retweet comments from other people. That is how I ended up reading more by, and eventually following, Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, LOL GOP, and the Daily Edge.

In each case, it is not just that they post their own work, but they post other items of interest. I know of several great news sources, but I do not have time to filter through them all, and having someone else pointing out what is especially interesting or noteworthy or troublesome helps. There is still that element of opening me up to more, but conversely it also acts as a filter.

That seems like touchy ground, because of my frustration with how so many people get far too much filtered out. However, it can always act as a starting point. If I feel like something is missing, I can do other searches. I can always check to see what Fox News is saying about something, and I periodically do. Often, their links work more to add context to what is already there.

Just to be clear, this is primarily one way communication, where I receive what the sources I choose to follow broadcast. You can send messages to the celebrities, but if they have a lot of followers, it will probably be swallowed up in a flood of other messages. Some musicians have started Twitter accounts and then neglected them because they are inundated with communication that can be surprisingly abusive since the writers are supposedly fans.

The advice that I always give with any social networking is that you need to decide how you want to use it. This has come up a lot with Facebook, where various friends, especially men, get on, and then hate it, and retreat, but often work their way back. Eventually they learn to block the game requests, or to turn off the chat window, and use Facebook in the way that works for them.

I had some people that I followed and had to unfollow because they just tweet too much. I still like them, I just can’t deal with following them. (I feel guiltiest about Steve Martin.)

I know one musician who follows the people who follow him, but then he turns them off from his feed. My first thought was that I had no idea you could do that, and I still don’t know how it is done. My second thought was that it seemed like cheating. However, he pointed out that many of his followers are from South America, so their tweets are not in English. In addition, this is the same boundary-challenged sex-obsessed fan base that drove three others to stop using Twitter, and they do tend to focus a lot on his past project, where he is trying to move forward with the present and future, so that choice make a lot of sense.

Why still follow them? Well, I haven’t had a chance to test it, but I think it is because if I send a tweet to you, but you do not follow me, it still will not show up in your feed. If you click on Connect, it should be both under your Interactions and Mentions, and you may have email notifications set up, where it will appear in email, but still, if you have a lot of active fans, that can get your email really full, or your Interactions and Mentions really full. So, I believe the way it works is that he does not see everything that they post, but he sees when they write to him.

And I have to say that he is great about responding. No matter how poorly written and ill-advised the tweets are, he just deflects with humor, and he answers again and again, and this is huge. It is an amazing thing when a fan hears back and even though the odds are against it happening often, sometimes it still does happen, and you just love them even more.

This is a reasonable solution for him, based on his situation, his goals, and his follower base. If he gains more followers in the future, he may need to alter it. As his band starts touring more and has a completed album available for sale, things may change there, including that they may need to focus more on an account for the band, in addition to their individual accounts. There are ways that can be worked out.

I had worked things out successfully where I was not being overloaded based on whom I followed. I was holding at 49 for a long time, but then I kept being attracted to more and more accounts. Some of that was the suggestions, and remembering to look up other people, but that was not all. Oddly, I started picking up followers that I did not expect, and just as I said that Twitter is not ideal for personal contact or 2-way communication, I seem to be heading more that way.

That is so like me.