Sometimes it can help to actually *see* someone using an application to grasp its possibilities as they may – or may not – apply to you. I’ve already written about where Twitter stands for me in the grand scheme of social media things. Here are three little screencasts to give you a quick visual overview of how I use Twitter.
Some things you should know before watching:
- My aim is to help anyone wondering whether it’s worth signing up, or anyone who has already signed up but is left wondering, “now what?’! Have a look and let me know what you think – is it helpful? Is this what you expected from Twitter? Is this how you use it? Who else do you know who uses Twitter in an interesting way?
- It’s not a complete introduction to Twitter. I start with the assumption that you’ve already signed up, or know how to sign up, and that you know how Twitter works in theory. (If you don’t yet know the basics then it might help to use Google to find an introduction that makes sense to you, or check out this one here.)
- It’s not a definitive guide to using Twitter either. It’s just a very quick walk-through of some of the ways I use it. At least, sometimes. Well, today, anyway.
- I’ve kept the screencasts very informal, very unscripted and under 5 mins each. I’m not a professional presenter and I have actual paying work to do today. So I don’t want to know if I’ve made any grammatical errors 🙂Â
(Click on the title below to open the screencast in a new browser window. You may need to scroll about to centre the action. I’ll try capture less screen next time… and maybe even embed 🙂 )
SCREENCAST 1: What Twitter looks like
A view of www.twitter.com from the inside out, i.e. once you’ve set up an account and have a community of people who you follow and who follow you.
SCREENCAST 2: Making Twitter work for you
A quick demo of TwitKit, a Firefox Add-on which helps manage your Twitter account. This is just one application from a veritable smorgasboard to help sort, aggregate, track and otherwise manipulate the information coming through your Twitter account. See here for a list of tools with marketing/business bent.
SCREENCAST 3: Tweet techniques to try
A run-through of some of my Tweets and how they’ve helped me. For example, to get local information, advice on social media, increase my blog readership, keep up-to-date with what’s happening in areas that interest me, etc. In other words, a Tweet doesn’t have to be about just telling people what you’re doing (although that can work too!).
As always, the best way to learn is to have a look at how others are using it. These guys are pretty frequent Twitterers, but are great examples of how Twitter can be used for different purposes:
- irishpolyglot: has several different Twitter accounts which he uses to Tweet (usually) the same message but to different followers and in different languages. Great way of reaching out to more than just the English speakers in the world – and of re-enforcing his online ‘brand’.
- matthewbennett: used Twitter to get feedback on features for a new social media project he’s developing, among other things. He’s doing a great job of building an audience engaged and interested in what he’s doing.
- pamslim: has used Twitter (along with her blog) to source case studies, anecdotes and other relevant content for a book she is currently writing. It’s also clearly keeping her in touch with a bunch of people she finds energising and inspiring.
[…] the conference weekend and has used her updates as a basis for her post. A fantastic example of how to use Twitter in a professional […]