Microblogging

I’m a little behind in my reading these days, but one book that jumped to the front recently is Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Joel Comm.

I received a a review copy on Monday and just started a skim last night. It was a bit fortuitous too as I’ve had a few fundamental Twitter configurations I’ve neglected for some time. I’d liken it to what a lot of you early adopters do when you skip the readme file.

One of the things I stumbled on during a quick chapter scan was a few mobile and SMS tips. I didn’t realize you could text “on georgedearing” to 40404 to turn on device updates for a user’s tweets. The same command applies for turning them off, just text “off @georgedearing” and my updates will disappear from your tweetstream.

From the looks of the Table of Contents, Twitter Power has something for everyone. If you’re a nuts and bolts kind of girl or guy, you can spend a few hours just reading what I’d describe as the Twitter “manual’ of sorts.

The book dissects the service extremely well. Even if your a Twitter A-Lister, you’ll probably pick up a few tips if you can overcome your ADD fits. Most of the hardcore analysis of the app focuses on the “Settings” in Twitter and understandably so. From configuring your background to automating the delivery of messages to your cell phone, “Settings” is where you’ll spend most of your time.

One of the more valuable nuggets, especially for new users, is some of the best practices and guidelines Joel discusses. In that vein, I pulled out an excerpt below that discusses 5 observations related to Twitter etiquette. I’ll craft  a part II of the review as I finish up, but don’t hold your breath — go pick it up.

1. Don’t spam.

Spammers don’t survive long on Twitter. They don’t build followers. Any followers they do get don’t read their tweets and the number of conversions they can generate will be so tiny that as a marketing method, you’d probably be better off printing a thousand flyers, folding them into paper airplanes and tossing them out of your office window.

The spamming itself though is done by constantly sending out tweets that say things like: “I’ve just put up a new blog post — check it out!” or “Sign up for my RSS feed!”

2. Follow Style Rules.

Twitter’s founders may have had mobile phones in mind when they designed the service, and plenty of users may be typing their updates from their handheld devices, but Twitter isn’t exactly the same as SMS messaging.
That means the language needs to look more like real words than the usual SMS-style abbreviations.

What is permissible, though, is to use symbols such as @ and=and to skip some of the grammar. The question Twitter asks might be “What are you doing now?” but you don’t have to begin your answer by saying “I am . . . ”
Sentence fragments such “About to start watching the football. Can’t wait.” are fine.

3. Give Credit For Retweets.

The tricky bit is to get other people to retweet for you. While you can ask specifically for retweets — and some people do — it’s not really good form.
If your tweets are interesting enough, people will share them with their friends and followers — and those friends and followers will come to your page to find out who you are.

4. Stick To 140 Characters.

The alternative is to show half-complete tweets and offer links for people to continue reading or break messages up so that they’re sent over several tweets.

You can see this happening sometimes on Twitter, and it rarely looks good. Readers expect the content on Twitter to be small. They expect to be able to read and absorb it in one bite. These are content snacks, not three-course meals with coffee.

Writing a thought that takes more than 140 characters and spreading it over three or four tweets is giving people more than they want. It also makes you look like you’re dominating the conversation.

5. Follow People Who Follow You.

It’s a bit like strolling through the lobby during a break at a conference. I can choose which conversations to join and which to walk past.

Ultimately, I think this is one place where eventually you have to skip the etiquette and do what works. As your follower list grows, you’ll have to start being a little bit choosier about who you follow in return — and your followers will just have to understand that you’re being selective, not rude.

And that’s really the ultimate test of tweet etiquette: how other people react and how you would react to the same kind of thing.
If you’re building followers and they’re responding to what you’re writing, you’re following the right rules.

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Tagged as: joel comm, Microblogging, microsharing, Twitter

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