As announced in my previous post I’d like to give a short (?) summary about my experiences with Twitter so far:
Not convinced at first
Yes, I had been indeed very sceptical at first. Would this be just another time consuming blabla-fun-thingy on the web? The promotion video on the twitter startpage and all the descriptions I had heard about it were not convincing at all: “log in and continuosly answer the question: what are you doing?” 
I’m not interested in getting to know that someone else is going to have a coffee or likes George Clooney. What benefit do I get from that? I want to learn and exchange RELEVANT informations!
Reading Chris Brogan’s tips on using twitter by answering the question “what has your attention” still didn’t get me to the point (sorry Chris). Might be a language/cultural thing (Stephanie can you hear me?).
Giving it a try
When I finally gave it a try, twitter turned out to be a very helpful and interesting tool that got me to know other people working in my business. And that much faster and in a much more concentrated way than any other social networking site had been able to do before!
How to get started
So here’s my way to describe it. It’s the way I would have liked to get an explanation and I hope this makes sense to you (please let me know and comment):
1. Yes, register on twitter, log in and edit your profile. Don’t forget to fill in your location and website or blog. Make sure the description you give about yourself contains the keywords you want to be found with.
2. Use the search tool on top of the page and look for keywords or names, locations, organisations etc. that match your interests.
In my first search I looked for people I already knew were on twitter in order to have something to start with. When you have found them click “Follow” under their avatar. From now on you get their updates on your twitter page called “Home”.
3. How about customizing your profile now? You can change the background picture and the colors of the main bloglike field and the sidebar.
4. Post about what you think could be interesting or helpful to others who search for the same things as you do. For example: I am interested in PR, communication, webdesign and social media. I am also interested in art, photography, writing, and disability issues and green politics.
Some important things to know about posting:
>>> Postings on twitter are limited to 140 signs. That makes you concentrate on the main information. Rambling (almost) impossible 
>>> Sometimes urls of links you’d like to share are longer than that. Then go to tinyurl.com and transform your link to a short url that you can post on twitter or anywhere else you need it.
>>> If you think a posting someone made is interesting copy and “retweet” it by copying and pasting it to your update form. IMPORTANT: if you do that: write “RT @” and the username you got the info from in front of your posting! This marks the source and also helps the author to see they have been retweeted.
>>> If you want to tag a keyword in your post write a # directly in front of it. Example: #communication
5. Someone you follow already might follow you now too. Check your email!
6. And if they have posted something you are interested in press “reply” in their post and send an answer.
7. Or send them a direct message (dm here, not pm) if you don’t want it to be public. Maybe they have already sent one to you? You find your dm in the sidebar.
8. Watch whom the ones you follow are replying to and about what. If it sounds interesting to you, click on their name and check their profiles. Perhaps they are interesting to follow too?
Your benefit
That way you create your own global and personal intranet with people who can share helpful information with you. Your own concentrated network of specialists.
>>> You can ask and reply to questions there, perhaps even tag them with the #.
>>> Share links to interesting websites or blogs (for example your own ones )
>>> Connect with people you can also meet in real life at conferences, meetups etc.
What do you think?
A final personal note: I rather follow people who share helpful and relevant information and interact with me. If someone only posts about drinking coffee or going shopping I don’t find that interesting. That might be okay if you use twitter privately. I don’t.
Does that make sense to you? Or do you still have questions I haven’t answered yet? Then send me a comment right here.
If you already are on twitter or want to join now you can connect with me: I’m @annetteschwindt and would be happy to hear from you!
UPDATE 2008/09/22: Just found these tipps on how to get started on twitter by Klaus Eck (in German).
“I rather follow people who share helpful and relevant information and interact with me. If someone only posts about drinking coffee or going shopping I don’t find that interesting. That might be okay if you use twitter privately. I don’t.”
I think that’s perfectly natural when you don’t know the person. When trying to enlarge your network through Twitter, you are going to go for people who have value-content in their streams.
However, this changes when you know the person. If the person posting about drinking coffee or going shopping happens to be somebody you met offline, had a nice chat with (it “clicked”) and you want to get to know them a bit more, then suddenly these irrelevant details become more valuable.
Ok, well I’m trying to get my head around it here. Whenever I put “status updates” on the web they are characterised by surreality or vacuousness. I doubt a lot of people will be interested by my revelations that I would like to have a bath with Alanis Morissette or if ice cubes have a form of DNA that we we just haven’t discovered yet.
And if I do have something interesting to share I can email or SMS people from my phone or from the web. Does Twitter have advantages over those two forms of communications?
@Stephanie: You’re right. But if someone only posts about having coffee etc. I don’t think I’ll get interested in following them in the first place.
Which leads me to @nearvana:
Advantages? Sure! SMS cost money and emails are sender focussed – twitter doesn’t/isn’t.
1) Twitter doesn’t cost you anything extra (you’re already paying your online flatrate anyway).
2) Can you read emails that people you don’t know yet send to others you probably don’t know yet either about things you are interested in? Can you search for these emails somewhere? Nope! So you’ll never know about it and you’ll never find them this way.
On twitter you can find other people who are interested in the same things, read what they post and interact with them quickly and efficiently. As I said: it helps you to build up your very own specialists’ network.
On one condition: YOU have to start in the way I described in my blog. It won’t come to you all alone. Fill in your description with the keywords you want to be found by and let people know about your website or blog. They won’t contact you if they cannot identify you.
I didn’t believe it either but give it a serious try and you’ll see.
Clive Thompson’s article in the New York Times might be interesting in this context: http://tinyurl.com/5ahjfs
He’s on Twitter, too: http://twitter.com/pomeranian99
Hi Matthias and thanks for the hint! (Well, both of them
)
Just to let you know that I’ve exchanged the link as yours didn’t lead there directly. Hope you don’t mind.
Very helpful advice, thanks Annette.
Hi Derek! You’re very welcome. Looking forward to see the edited version of your profile!
[...] questions about Twitter from German speaking people. This is why I’d like to link back to my old post in English and then add a few things here before I repost the whole thing in German [...]
[...] that I have explained some more things about using Twitter on this blog before (please read [...]