RE-TWEET IT!
Tweet
I test many things, try different ideas and end up embracing the ones that work, dropping the others. And no, I’m not afraid of being wrong – or accepting it!
These are the changes I’m going to make to the way I use Twitter. (With 2,749 followers, I felt that merited a blog post!)
1. Completely revamp the list of 40 people I’m following
I follow my own ‘Twitter Rule of FORTY’ – because it works. For me. It has enriched my Twitter experience remarkably, and I don’t see myself regressing to the ‘follow free for all’ that once cluttered up my tweet stream to the point of uselessness.
But I’m going to CHANGE the list of 40-something people I follow – and no, it doesn’t mean I don’t like you if I stopped following you 
2. Lower my frequency of Twitter use to 3 days a week
I’m a Twitter efficiency fanatic, and explained how to do Twitter in 10 minutes a day.
Yet, I find myself spending a lot more than that lately – and the result is that other things are suffering. So I’m commiting to reducing the frequency with which I access Twitter to 3 days a week – very likely Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
3. Cut down from ‘as and when’ to ‘once a day’
Along the same lines, instead of dropping by Twitter as and when I feel like it (which is wasteful of time and counter-productive to my other work), I’m going to visit Twitter once in a day – and do all Twitter tasks during that one visit.
4. Focus on my ‘current interest’ only
Twitter is great because it gives you access to information and people across all areas of interest and specialization. For someone with as many interests as myself, this is a treasure chest.
Still, at a buffet, you don’t try and stuff yourself with ALL dishes on the table! You pick and choose. And so I’m going to pick discussions, personalities and resources that are related to my current interest only (right now, it is writing and publishing 3 books).
5. Use ‘@drmani’ and SEARCH for information
So what about other interests? I won’t be missing much thanks to the pretty effective Twitter SEARCH function. And I’ll be accessible to everyone in my Twitter network through the ‘@drmani’ function.
Which means YOU can still get my attention through an @drmani message.
And I can find YOU through the Twitter SEARCH tool.
Cool!
Now that I’ve written this down, it sounds as good as it did when I thought it out – so here’s to implementing these ideas!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments }
Dear Doc,
No rules on twitter.
Are you worried that your herd will take offense if you don’t explain your changing twitter ways?
Do you think these changes will lose you some of your followers?
Are you getting better response to your tweets? You were quite disappointed with response a while ago.
Do you think twitter is becoming more or less valuable as the noise increases?
Thanks again for all you do for the children.
@Steve Markowski -
You ask: “Are you worried that your herd will take offense if you don’t explain your changing twitter ways?”
Well, my followers on Twitter (I don’t ever think of them as a herd, with implications of unthinking behavior, but rather as a TRIBE) may or may not take offense – but communication is an essential tenet of any networking, and this explanation is a short-cut I took for “one to many” communication of this decision.
Will I lose followers because of these changes? Don’t know. I’ve never been one to worry too much about that specific metric, because for my purposes on Twitter, number matters less – quality matters more. Those who matter won’t leave because of this.
Twitter still doesn’t work great for ‘direct response’ style messaging, but is an interesting (and yes, profitable and effective) channel to keep in touch with my audience.
For me, and with my style of “Follow Forty” tweeting, Twitter noise is NOT increasing – hence the value continues to remain high. And as I use Twitter in newer ways, it is becoming MORE valuable day by day.
All success
Dr.Mani
Comments on this entry are closed.