Small Business By Design

Chances are you have heard about Twitter. If you are like most people, you might not really understand what the “point” of all this twittering is.

Twitter, in a nutshell, is micro-blogging. Short 140-character posts. Some people also call it life-casting. Twitter often gets a bad rap that its participants are just broadcasting the mundane details of their lives. Although these descriptions hold truth, Twitter is really so much more than this. Twitter is really all about interaction and building relationships. In fact, a lot of self-employed people use it just to feel like they are connected to a world outside of their home office. Twitter is about getting involved in conversations with people you follow, sharing information, ideas and often a laugh.

Lets go over a few Twitter terms:

•  Follower: When you decide you want to be able to see what someone is saying on Twitter, you follow them. You don’t have to know someone to follow them, and in most cases they don’t have to “approve” you following them. Likewise, people can follow you as well. They can be people you really know or complete strangers.

•  Tweet: A tweet is a post. It consists of a 140-character message of your choosing.

•  Retweet: This is when you re-post something someone else said. The benefit of this is that you are passing on a message from someone you follow to the people who follow you. Great content spreads quickly like this.

•  At-reply: When you want to direct a message at one someone, you include their Twitter handle, which includes the “@ sign” followed by their username. When you do this, the user will be notified that you referenced them in one of your tweets.

•  Direct Message: A direct message is essentially like a 140-character email message within Twitter. This form of communicating in Twitter is private.

•  Tweeting or Twittering: The act of posting tweets.

A few things you should know before getting started with Twitter:
The #1 thing to know: Everything you post is public to the world. Don’t get overly freaked about this, but its something to always have in mind. You don’t want to give TOO much information about yourself or say something that could be potentially used negatively against you at some point in time. It IS possible to protect your account so that it can only be viewed with your permission, but honestly, this goes against everything that Twitter is about.

The #2 thing to know: Be authentic. Since Twitter is all about relationship-building, it makes no sense to try to build relationships from a false persona. For this reason, businesses can have a hard time embracing Twitter, because it doesn’t work when it is confined to too many rules. Twitter is all about being Ed the Software Developer who works at ABC Labs, not ABC Labs, the cold, unidentifiable Twitter presence. Twitter was made for people. It is possible to “work your business” on Twitter, but it’s really done best through being yourself. Mix up your tweets: talk a little business, talk a little about you, comment on other people’s conversations and share knowledge that your followers would appreciate.

The #3 thing to know: Twitter is not nearly as good without a third-party app. It’s really inconvenient to have to log on to Twitter.com to post or check your account. For the most part it doesn’t really notify you that you have been referenced in a tweet or if people are retweeting your messages. You will ideally want to use what is called a third-party app—an application that you can install to monitor and participate in Twitter right from your desktop or mobile phone. Two of the most popular applications are Tweetie and Tweetdeck.

Once you get on Twitter you will need to complete your 160-character bio and upload some sort of avatar. Make sure you upload an avatar, as most people don’t think you are serious about Twitter if you don’t even bother to upload an avatar. If using your Twitter for any type of professional purpose, make sure to note your profession in some way. But feel free to pepper your profile with some personal tidbits as well. Authenticity is key!

Before you really get going with Twitter, you may wish to join and follow a few interesting people and just kind-of observe how other people are using Twitter. As the creators of Twitter have said: There is no wrong way to use Twitter. Each person uses it a little differently as they see fit. For more information about getting started, you can read the Twitter 101 section on the Twitter website.

So you are probably wondering how you find interesting people to follow. One of the easiest ways is to just use the “Find People” feature on twitter.com. You can search by name or by keyword, although this feature can be just a bit buggy. There are also some other websites that allow you to search for users, but you can discover those in time as you become more familiar with Twitter.

When using Twitter effectively, you can really connect with people you never would have. Because of Twitter, I know dozens more creatives than I ever would have before, have become much more involved in the design community and have learned about tons of new websites, resources and technologies. If you are thinking that Twitter is just another time-suck, you are probably right, but if you manage your participation well it can have great benefits. If you log on and try it out, make sure you follow me at @melissabalkon. Happy Twittering!