It’s the end of a busy week and my new Droid cell phone has come alive with it’s new Twitter Twidroid application. Many of my friends and co-workers have been interested in the Droid, since it represents a great phone on a great network (Verizon). While people are interested in the capabilities of the phone, when I show them the Twitter interface, almost everyone asks, How does Twitter work?
Twitter Tips
Here is a quick overview of Twitter and three tips to get you started. The best way to do this is share with you three great blog posts by some of the best tweeters in the industry (I’ll save the review of the Droid for another post).
Getting Started with Twitter.
The Twitter page explains…
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Thomas Nelson Publishing CEO, Michael Hyatt has a great beginners guide to Twitter. He wrote it for a friend, but it’s simple objective may help you get started. Michael’s post starts out…
I thought, I wish I had a simple, step-by-step guide to give him. It doesn’t take long to get set-up with Twitter, but it helps if you know the basics. So, I decided to document these eight basic steps:
He lists out eight basic steps to get you going.
- Set up your account.
- Tweak your settings.
- Set up your phone.
- Follow some family or friends.
- Learn the basic commands.
- Start Twittering.
- Be careful.
- Consider third party apps.
I found Michael’s guide refreshingly simple. While it is based on using a text based cell phone, it is easily modifiable to smart phones like the iPhone or Droid. Once you get the hang of Twitter you may want to find a way to reach out to your followers in a scheduled and orderly manner That is where Nik-Nik comes in..
Setting up a Tweet Plan
If you have been on Twitter very long and followed anyone of stature in the Twitter universe, you’ll quickly conclude from the volume of their tweets that they don’t have a life or they use some type of software to deliver their messages throughout the day.
Blogger and Real Estate tech pro Nicole Nicolay, has put together a simple guide to help you reach out to your tweet readers in a scheduled and orderly manner.
Her four step tweet plan includes
- Start a Tweet Topic List
- Identify Your Resources
- Schedule Your Drip Tweets
- Supplement with Spontaneous Tweets
Her plan is easy to setup and is intended to help you become a “Trusted Advisor” to your intended audience. I really like her plan as it provides useful content along with spontaneous messages. This will separate you from the “what I had for breakfast etc. noise” on Twitter.
So now you are tweeting and providing useful content to your followers but there is another step to take. One that can help you…
Become a Public Celebrity
Dwayne Melancon, world traveler and airport tweeter, has a great blog post about taking social media to a new level, where you the content provider becomes an actual celebrity.
Based on the book, Celebritize Yourself by Marsha Friedman, Dwayne’s post and review is a great look into the world of becoming a Local or Public Celebrity. His review covers the use of social media and also delves into writing a book and publishing articles.
Dwayne shows how Twitter, with it’s timely and local access, can help you reach out to the world or just to a group of local friends.
Having followed Dwayne’s, Genuine Curiosity blog for years, it was great to see that Dwayne took Marsha’s advice and is now writing a book. It’s also refreshing to see how Dwayne included his Twitter feed on the right hand sidebar of his blog.
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As you get started with Twitter, be sure to follow these great twitter links from above to help you get great content on a daily basis. Be sure to leave a comment and your twitter links for all of us to follow.
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BTW… I took Marsha’s advice a year ago a wrote a book that you can find here.