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Trial by tweet – the Editor logs on to Twitter and chooses between writer’s block and a terrific tweet
I sat immobile at my computer screen, hands hovering uncertainly over the keyboard, my eyes flicking from screen to keyboard, keyboard back to screen. I felt tension beginning to creep into my shoulders and I rested my wrists on my desk to help drop my shoulders as I exhaled very slowly. This was not going to be easy. Call yourself a writer? I muttered to myself. Idiot!
“What are you doing?” I glanced again at the question on my computer screen. The cursor in the answer box below blinked impatiently at me. “Come on! Come on!” it seemed to admonish, “If you’ve got nothing to say then I’ve got plenty of others who do! Stephen Fry for one….and probably Oprah too, if she’s remembered her username and password.”
What am I doing? What am I doing? I mumbled to myself under my breath. Well, strictly speaking I was just sitting there in a trance-like state, staring at the Twitter screen doing, well, absolutely nothing! But should I write that? I thought better of it. Instead, I sighed heavily, spun away from my keyboard - time for a coffee I thought.
That was my first experience of the social networking world, not quite the glittering success I hoped it might be. Which is a shame because according to sources, Twitter, the micro-blogging social networking site where people can post messages of up to 140 characters (known as “tweets”) usually in answer to the question “What are you doing?” has experienced “explosive” growth. Research firm Nielsen Online shows that visitors to the site increased by 1,382%, from 475,000 to seven million between February 2008 and February 2009. In the past 4 months, it is thought to have topped the 10 million visitor mark and is growing faster than any other social network.
So, aside from causing writer’s block, just what is it with Twitter?
Perhaps you’re more of a “follower”? I consoled myself with this thought as I returned to my computer, coffee in hand. You become a follower when you sign on to follow the tweets of a particular “twitterer.” So I duly searched for people I might want to follow and ended up with an eclectic mix of an acquaintance (my fitness instructor) that nice man off the tele (Tim Lovejoy) and Sockington, an American cat with attitude – apparently animals can tweet too. I couldn't follow any of my friends, not because I don't have any (don't be ridiculous!) but because interestingly none of my friends are on Twitter. I also thought I should follow a company, so I plumped for Sun Microsystems because my brother-in-law works there and I thought if anyone had the hang of this social networking vibe it would be a technology company. I began following... or possibly stalking in the case of Tim Lovejoy ;)
It turned out my fitness instructor wasn't much of a twitterer. In fact, if he was as inactive offline as he was online then he wouldn't, couldn't be called a fitness instructor! Tim Lovejoy was a different matter entirely: many tweets, many about football (yawn!) many in a incomprehensible language/format - rapidly going off him - to know him is not to love him - I long for the unavailable TV Tim and not this strangely normal (boring) bloke. Sockington (cat with attitude) is an active twitterer and more interesting than Tim Lovejoy - but come on! Who are you really Sockington? And I bet you don't have a girlfriend... Finally, my message to Sun Microsystems would simply be: is that all you do? Run conferences / workshops for people who don't know how to make your kit work? Not only boring but a little worrying perhaps?
Interestingly, my early experiences seem to match a Harvard snap-shot study of 300,000 users, which found that more than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days, that most people only ever tweet once during their lifetime and that just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content. Research from Nielsen also suggests that many people give the service a try, but rarely or never return. The Harvard team concluded from their research that Twitter is currently “more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.”
So, it would appear that Twitter is the preserve of the "super-users". The most popular person to follow on Twitter is the US movie star Ashton Kutcher who has more than two million followers and, of course, our own Stephen Fry who is a huge fan of the site (unlike his ex-comedy partner Hugh Laurie who in an interview with the BBC declared himself bewildered by the purpose of the site.) Equally, when Oprah Winfrey sent her first tweet live on air thus bringing Twitter to the attention of ordinary Americans, traffic to the site apparently went up 43% as a result.
However, it has to be acknowledged that there is much talk about Twitter and the like and their potential for the business user. I would have thought, naively perhaps, that the clue is in their name: “social” networking sites. Don’t tell me this is another amusing pastime that we are ruthlessly going to hi-jack for business purposes? Or maybe that’s just the excuse that users employ when they are visiting these sites socially during office hours and apparently creating a “productivity black hole” according to IT services group Morse, who questioned 1,460 office workers who on average spent 40 minutes a week on these sites.
Although many offices have banned the use of Facebook during office hours, it would appear that Twitter is still fluttering under the radar, spurred on by self appointed social media experts who see Twitter as the next big thing in brand communication strategies. But, don’t worry, I’ll let you into a secret - no one knows how to do it yet! A commentator attending a conference called: “Everything a brand needs to know about Twitter and real-time social media” comments in his blog that the event has so far “been heavy on hot air and light on substance.” He concludes that there is a school of thought that says for companies who are not yet using social media, its worth "just getting out there and doing it!" But doing what exactly?
Well, for a start, you can tweet your website URL or specific article/blog URLs or news about products/activities that might be of interest to a particular niche audience – “of interest” is the key point here – this will not only drive interested followers back to your website but those same followers may “re-tweet” those links to their followers so your news spreads and your website traffic increases. This raises two further important points about Twitter.
Firstly, how do you find niche audiences in the first place? People linked to specific industries can be found using Twitter search and you can also see what people are talking about using monitter.com, a tool that allows you to monitor Twitter for keywords that are of interest to you. The more relevant people you connect with, the more re-tweeting potential you unlock with their followers.
Secondly, don’t make Twitter all about you. It’s important you do your bit by sharing links from your followers so that everyone shares the benefits of an expanded like-minded community. Twitter should be about having conversations, answering questions and taking part in debates – activities relevant both to business and personal use.
Highlighting other uses of Twitter is business-to-business industry researcher AIIM, who’s VP Atle Skjekkeland says: ”Twitter brings back such quick answers from any expert community that it cannot fail to have a lasting place within the general business toolbox.” Also, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, having announced a search deal with Twitter whereby updates on Twitter will appear in Google search results, says that the importance of real-time data has grown exponentially as people find different types of uses for Twitter. For example searchers would benefit from real-time information on weather conditions in a particular place from people who are actually there, or the reporting of international news events, especially those where the authorities have prevented information from being spread by traditional means, such as the Iran election.
From this, we come full circle to the golden rule whenever a new communication platform emerges: Content Is King. A colleague of mine when commenting on the wisdom of using Twitter for business purposes posed two challenges. Firstly, identifying the resource for posting good quality content at the right intervals and secondly, identifying someone interesting enough to present interesting content in an interesting way to engage a healthy number of followers. Good points I feel.
Another thing, for now Twitter is a free service. They say they have plenty of money in the bank and patient investors and their aim is to “build a lasting company.” We have of course heard all this before. Commentators have pointed out that Twitter is a typical dotcom company – high on visibility but low on making money. Until they address this, their long-term survival may be questionable. Or at least easy prey to the disinterest of those of us who either have writer's block or who are easily bored by the minutiae of other people's private and business lives.
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