Ding dong, or should that be twit-twoo…

In the case that it’s not working out for you and you are too cheap to pony up then what about these;

Cotweet – This has all the team functionality of Hootsuite at no cost but doesn’t include other social networks apart from Twitter (yet).

Twitterfeed – Need to feed in RSS feeds to your social accounts? This is free and does just that.

Or look at ping.fm and socialoomph (free and paid levels).

What are you using?

Does this say anything?

This post is really written on my experience of using a personal twitter account, less for business, Oh by the way I’m Ben Gribbin.

Time

Ok, so time doesn’t seem to equate much in the use of twitter. And it’s not really the amount of time that concerned me. Tweeting takes seconds, if that, so this isn’t a problem. It’s the use of my time, and twitters effects on my workflow that concerned me.

I’ve read before that in productivity circles it takes anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to truly get rolling on a task, to really focus and zone in. But I was refreshing twitter every 20 minutes and tweeting as much, causing lower concentration.

My advice would be that if you want to remain a twitter-er then switch off while you work. Growl makes sure you get interrupted, so switch this off too. You should see a marked improvement in your focus. However, this wasn’t the only concern I had.

Feeling like your missing out

You may have been shouting at me previously… “WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST TURN TWITTER OFF?”. Frankly, because I felt like I could miss out on something truly awesome.

I liked to read each and every tweet. I had carefully followed those who interested me and those who often tweeted about jobs and the industry I work in. So by turning twitter off for several hours, I would create a back-log and potentially miss an important or note-worthy tweet.

Of-course, these kind of tweets are few and far between. But checking for them was causing distraction. Not only that, but I would be sat with friends, staring at my iPhone – conversing with tweeters as opposed to real, human faces. It’s important you get the balance right.

Make sure you never put tweeting before friends. It is considered rude to be using your phone when in the presence, or even conversation of others so keep that well in mind. Anything you miss can be caught up with at the end of the day.

Tweet Quality

I’ve noticed over the past few years I’ve been using twitter a shift in the kind of tweets out there. Things like give-aways, competitions and accounts that only tweet links to articles we’re starting to get on my nerves a little. Then you have those who tweet mundane or useless twaddle. Things like “I had my haircut on Monday and it needs doing again” or “Just took my dog for a walk” might rank high on some peoples interest, but they were clogging up my stream with random banter.

Twitter used to be new, fun and exciting. People wouldn’t tweet about their daily hygiene habits or how they like their coffee. It would be fun and vibrant chat about design between a focussed and large group of designers / geek types.

So in essence, I’m saying here that you should consider what you tweet first. Tweet interesting stuff. Not boring drivel, tweeters only have a short fuse and it’s incredibly easy to hit unfollow!

If your not growing on twitter, chances are your dull.

Then are those who only tweet links. Aren’t Digg and Del.Ico.US for interesting links? Not twitter….

How could I forget the self-promoters or self-congratulators? Those that constantly post about how great they are at design or how you should buy your new book. Of course, your followers want to hear about what your up to but not have it constantly shoved down their necks much like a mother bird feeds her children regurgitated worms.

People who don’t interact with the community

Another element to my quitting twitter was the gradual shift of those who actually interact with their community. Don’t get me wrong, there are some awesome tweeters out there, with 1000′s of followers and they regularly talk with each one.

But then there are account-holders who are simply out to bolster their wallets, follower count or egos. Those who follow you, for the follow-back, only to unfollow you…

I’m ashamed to say there are tweeters in our industry who fit the above. They basically ignore you. Yes, ok they have a lot of followers. But it can go to their heads, giving them an inflated view of ones-self.

Spam

Sad to say, Twitter is becoming a victim of it’s own popularity. Z-List celebrities begin to name-drop Twitter purely to sound cool, whilst Radio presenters world-wide have all got sections in their programs dedicated to reading tweets or similar.

This has pushed popularity up, along with increasing those with a less than honest intention to join the band wagon.

Spam on twitter is increasing. If I had a £1 for every DM requesting me to join some Mafia game I’d be filthy rich. Like a real Mafia boss..

These are the reasons that moved me to quit Twitter. It wasn’t an easy decision, I’ve tweeted at-least 5 times a day for the last year and a half – it really does become part of your day-to-day life.

Of course, I’m not saying Twitter is any less interesting or unique as it first was. These are just my own opinions. Twitter is still growing at ridiculous rates and is becoming as important as email or IMing for some. Perhaps you’ve experienced some of the above. Then again, it could just be me. Still, since quitting Twitter, I’ve felt more free. I’ve felt more focussed. Yes, ok, I still have to use it for a lot of my work. I write for many blogs and managing (and interacting) with the community is essential. But on a personal basis, It’s not for me. I feel as though I have more time and I like it! I really haven’t missed it. A fresh start to 2010.

Will you be joining me in quitting twitter? Did you ever think about quitting? What stopped you?

Img: Flickr

Anyway I didn’t have one, I haven’t had one for years but had to knock one up pretty quick.

Taking information from LinkedIN I quickly made a brief one page outline of my current & past experience.

This is something we should all have even if we think we don’t need it, it still comes in handy to have something that is easily updated & shared if you are asked, so I also asked my friend Hein Maas to turn this in to an HTML Template.

View the free html resume template demo I set up, download the template including psd file, or you can download the files via the link in the footer of the demo.

If you like and will use this template then please consider donating a dollar to Tweetsgiving, a global celebration that aims to change the world through the power of gratitude, Thank you!

So a spammy email I received earlier prompted me to ask the question:

Question? What do you regard more spammy an unsolicited email or an unsolicited @ on Twitter?

OK and I wanted to add in here an image and link to the 20+ replies from people but can’t as Twitter removed the ‘in reply to’ feature from many tweets (is it Twitter or the Desktop clients at fault here?)

So what I wanted to say was… hmmm but then that idea is screwed up with the lack of ‘in reply to’ DAMN!

Am I saying this out loud or just in my head?

OK thinking as I type here, an exercise only women think they can execute well! (Really! ask my wife!)

So my idea was but it seems to have hit a brick wall. Why do tweets have to contain a url to be logged as a comment on your blog post?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could automatically gather tweets and comments ‘in reply’ to your new post tweet.

Don’t understand what I mean (maybe me either but the idea is coming out as I type….)

I tweet: New post: A better way of blog commenting http://bit.ly/blahblah

You can retweet that if you like that would be great! But how many people have the time to comment these days?

Wouldn’t it be better if it was possible for you just to reply to the comment by replying to my tweet and that automatically added your tweet comment to the end of my blog post?

Maybe I have to register the status update url with the blog post to match it up?

Will comments to retweets of my tweet be able to get tied back to my blog post?Come on backtype is there a way?

What is that?

Well actually that’s what we do!

SocialMediaFish is a full outsourcing company for Social Media Marketing.

Many companies don’t have the skills in-house and hiring agencies to connect them to the Social Media world can be expensive or ineffective.

That’s where we come in.

Through a range of packages & options we cover all your needs for connecting, marketing or effecting cost savings across your organization by utilizing Social & New Media tools such as Copywriting, Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube & more.

From preparing a Social Media strategy after analyzing your company needs, to the outsourcing of parts of that strategy to training individuals how to use Social Media tools and then reporting on this investment, basically we cover the angles needed to get your company started, continue & to be effective within the Social Media Marketing space.For more details on how our services can help you and your company effect change on the bottom line then contact us for details.

As Beth Harte said:

The secret about VC funding is the VCs decide the model because they want their $$ & some back.

Companies, however high they might sit on a pedestal HAVE to make money to survive, especially with VC funding. Investors want to get PAID!

Since setting up on Twitter and running various Social Media services with companies for the past 18 months I have NEVER entertained the idea of Advertising in tweets or so called ‘Sponsored Tweets’

Well my post today is to admit change or more …experiment, I have signed up for the Ad service Ad.ly, as a business I help companies make money in different ways using Social Media channels, be it to connect with existing customers, find new customers, new support channels, effecting change in processes and therefore cost savings, etc. so my personal Twitter account makes money for me in this respect.

I have too long been outspoken about new ideas without experimenting or trying these things for myself.

I wholly expect some reaction to this experiment and possibly a fair bit of negativity, Twitter IS a Social network it’s primarily a way for people to connect but it is also a platform for businesses to connect.

For eg. I have been responsible for approx 79K clicks to various websites this past week, Free! Gratis! isn’t that advertising? Every single site from those 79K clicks has Advertising on it or will try to sell you something at some point…

I would appreciate hearing any comments about your concerns about Advertising in tweets positive AND negative this is an experiment and a resource, maybe it will in the end serve as justification to not sign up for these services but I’m willing to test the waters.Let me know what you think!

This morning I saw a tweet from @scottgould

I wonder when people will start having guest tweets?

So I replied and Scott sent the first (yeah I’m sure it’s not but hey!) Guest tweet from my account…

Guest Tweet from @scottgould: This is the first Guest Tweet in the world. It’s like texting on someone else’s phone, but with permission!

To be honest it was just a bit of fun but caught a negative reaction.

Now there are a few things I can think of in favor of something like this but for the life of me I can’t think of any negatives? Can you?

Yes guest tweets caught be bought and exchanged but we already have that.

Instead of the negatives think of some positives;

• a #followfriday introduction from the person you want to introduce….
• a link to an event from the organizer instead of a retweet
• a new book launch from the Author themselves

And many more…

I thought of it as this:

Lets say Scott is at #likeminds next year and he spies someone in the audience, he wants to introduce you to that person, would he say a few sentences and then move on or might he ask that person to the stage to say a few words and pass over the mic?

So far I made a few lists but ended up deleting them, one has become pretty popular although intentionally trying to name it impersonally and in a niche I have still had several complaints from people.

Why am I not on it?

I can see they are a cool way to find people to follow but when I follow someone I really follow them I want them in my mainstream and I want them to know I’m following them.

Chris doesn’t like them! Robert loves them!

I’m trying something new, in preparation of Tweetdeck‘s support of lists which I hope is imminent, yesterday I started using Socialoomph formally known as TweetLater.

This tool has a Friend Finder feature, normally that would be used probably by some marketer’s to find people talking about certain keywords, but they have also added a new feature for lists.

In short terms this service finds people mentioning me ‘imrogb‘ and adds them to a queue for me to vet which I then manually approve or reject and then it follows the approved people and puts them in a list of my choosing.How are you using lists? Are you finding value yet or is Desktop client integration holding you back?

In this post are many valid points, and one point about Facebook he says:

SO GLAD I deleted most of the people I had friended on Facebook and went down to a core group of people

I friended Robert some months ago and he never responded to the friend request it’s still sitting there somewhere pending, to be honest I never even realized as he uses FB so infrequently, I don’t care that he unfollowed me on Twitter I kept following him (Through the new Lists system I presume, he is back following me again) , Robert for me is someone I can gleen tech information from, we’re not buddies we’ve never met and I doubt our networking together would provide any rich benefits for either party.

But I digress!

Back to Facebook, you see if you don’t action anything on someones friend request to you then the person issuing the friend request will see everything you post BUT, can’t like it, can’t share it and damn sure can’t comment.

I don’t like this and Facebook should change it! But to What?

Having to go to Twitter to reply to Robert that’s just not cricket! Surely Facebook want to keep me ON Facebook?

But then is this Roberts choice by not friending everyone (which he shouldn’t have to) then it puts him on a pretty private island just broadcasting to the masses but only his clique (I mean that in a nice way) are able to interact with his updates.Solutions? Or is this just another Facebook is for people I know Twitter is for people I want to know?