Finding A Reason To Twitter & Tweet
I first joined Twitter in April 2007 and quickly lost interest in the blah blah blah of inane stranger conversation. My social circle is the size of a dot and I couldn't imagine why anyone would be interested in what I was doing at any given time. Graham Langdon recently put himself out there with a prediction that Twitter would be "bigger than Facebook." After I got done rolling on the floor and wondering if maybe the EntreGuru had missed April Fools by a few days, I got around to actually thinking about the points he made in his article.
Well, I'm not looking to hobnob with TechCrunch or other A listers, and to my knowledge the only "celebrity" I would be interested in following (Tiger Woods) isn't all a Twitter about the service just yet. And while I haven't changed my mind about the Facebook prediction, I am starting to think about to use Twitter to publicize this blog. Max of SiteHoppin.com mentioned that he only Twitters for SEO purposes and that got me thinking. Sure, I can do that. Will anyone care to get the newsflash that The Entrecarder has created another masterful post? Ummmm...doubt it. Should they care that much they'll likely just subscribe via a reader. (For a really good review of Twitter basics, see Bill's post entitled The Idiots Guide To Twitter at The Blog Entrepreneur.)
Stepping away from my previous view of Twitter, I realized that there are several possibilities for Entrecarders that could be interesting:
1) Create some interest in your blog by holding a Twitter-only contest that lasts for just a few minutes or hours.
2) Give ECs to people who comment on your blog and who include a code word that you sent via Twitter.
3) Use Twitter to alert other Entrecarders about important Entrecard announcements, forum threads, Dev Chats, etc.
4) Post mini rants on Twitter that you don't want to publish in the Entrecard forums.
5) Get Phirate to post on Twitter every time he creates a new thread in the forums.
I'm sure that others can think of additional opportunities for an Entrecarder to use Twitter to publicize their blog. I checked the Twitter TOS and didn't see any prohibitions against having multiple accounts, so I went ahead and registered an account for each of the brands that I use online (BizBeacon, Intunique, Entrecarder) as well as one in my name for personal twittering. Oh, and since Graham left the door open, I grabbed "Entrecard", too. If you haven't registered for a Twitter account you might want to do so if for no other reason than to get the usernames & keywords that you want to protect.
As a result of taking a new look at Twitter I decided to dump all the folks that I had been following and start following some new folks. First on the list? Graham Langdon, which was good timing, seeing as how he broke the news that the new Ad Pricing system was going to be implemented yesterday via Twitter and I was one of the first to hear about it. Second on my currently very short list? Max of SiteHoppin. I also just signed up to follow JoeTech, mostly to get some updates on his invite-only Twittertech.com site.
I also signed up for Twitterfeed, so this post should automatically get Twittered in a few hours. I'm occasionally Twittering for this blog under the name Entrecarder.
April 9, 2008 at 2:06 AM
I didn't know about twitterfeed, so that's cool. Thanks. I just signed up for Twitter myself and I have nothing to say. it's not that I'm not doing anything, I feel weird sending random updates... why would people care??
Anyways, I mostly read what other people are doing and just respond, unless they are just dying to know i'm stuck in traffic somewhere...
The jury is still out, i guess
April 9, 2008 at 4:56 AM
Just like you were, I'm still confused why is it interesting to see someone's blah blah and why is it interesting for someone to see me doing blah2 :D
I'll reconsider using twitter now after reading your post..
April 9, 2008 at 6:59 AM
Twitter absolutely left me cold, but reading your article here and the one you linked to has almost convinced me to get more serious about it.
I already feed my blog posts to Twitter thanks to the TwitterFeed plugin, but don't have a spot reserved for the reverse and perhaps I should do that.
I will still have to do some serious debate with myself over devoting still more of my limited time to something like this -- btw, have you gotten into UTTERZ? That's pretty cool too.
M
April 10, 2008 at 7:41 AM
I'm TRYING to get interested but still can't get onboard. I spent a month trying to give a "yes"" to Entrecard-becuase to me that seemed like a bunch of ballpark venders selling peanuts to each other instead of to the fans.
With Twitter, I guess I SO don't care what other people are doing at any given moment. But I'll reconsider also, in terms of it's SEO value.