Twitter makes me feel a little like Forrest Gump. Who are all these people and why are they following me!?
At first I was thrilled! yea!, look someone is following me! And it was mainly good. Sure, I had some Bots offering me Russian Brides and free iPads. But, I go to NYC fairly often and get even more interesting offers from Street Vendors (that isn’t really chicken is it? and no, I don’t want to support your cat, and, um, others…) For the most part I thought is was great!
Oh, look new follower. Click through their profile, see what they Tweet. Hmm, broadcasting, linking, #teamfollowwhatever, scroll scroll, ok, nevermind on this one. Oh, wow, killer SEO insight and a RT conversationalist, follow. I even found friends, yes Dan @danperezfilms, real friends. Several groups of people, most notably #UsGuys, but also friends at #oneshotwednesday, #haiku, #fourwords, #genychat, #imcchat, #gogyohka, #poetparty, #theprompt, #Tweetdiner, #usLiveWell and even on #mbtweetrace! I started to snowball with followers.
TwentyFeet.com showed me what was happening, but not why.
Check out Twentyfeet.com and ask for Martin @mseibert. They are working on the “why” and have other interesting Social Media Metrics Visualization tools and dashboards under development.
So in a month I doubled followers and the curve is pretty tight so in another month and another. Well two problems. One, I believe Social Media is really Relationship Media. I do not want to become a “broadcaster”. (just not my thing) Two, where am I going to find the time to screen all these new “friends”?
Then, it happened, the shattering Public unfollow!
(ID blurred to protect from sharp-tongued poets)
Ok, I took it like a man. You know, blinked back the tears and soldiering on. The Conversation even turned to should I get multiple Twitter IDS and Tweet Poetry on one, #UsGuys on another. Helpful people DM’d me saying they’d follow my Sybilian other accounts. I guess I need one for my family and one for #Ideachat and maybe another for #usGeeked, oh and I really probably should have one for when all the other’s are in #Twitterjail.
But, wait a minute? Isn’t that what I use Tweetdeck for? Oh yeah, it is! So now I’m on a mission to teach people how to use tools and Hashtags. Check out one YouTube Video on how to configure Tweetdeck for LinkedIn here. I hardly ever look at the “all friends” stream in Tweetdeck. I’m hanging out in Hashtags on Tweetdeck on the PC, Android, and iPad (can I say iPad here without a Borg swarm of Bots offering me dubious links?). Take a look below (click on it to blow up real size).
One of the reasons I Love Hashable!
If you do want to follow me or even better, know someone who does please use Hashable.com Hashable will let me know who we know! You need an Invite to join the Hashable Beta and I’ll be happy to send you one. For more information go to: Why I Love Hashable! The screenshot below shows a recent Hashable #Intro. I see who introduced us and what followers we have in common! This is so much better than scroll, scroll, scroll! Can read their Bio, click through to Twitter or follow back right here. Hit me with a #justmet if we’ve become friends on the Stream and you want to officially mark it! The #justmet tag gives us a link with similar information below. (again, you have to be “in” Hashable’s beta for this to work.
Thanks Michele @prosperitygal for the #Intro to @Brianwilliams
Follow me if you dare…
#justsaying, I do warn people that I’m for experienced Tweeters only. Because I have multiple interests. Think of Twitter as a Big Conference, like #CES. Watching my steam is kinda like trying to listen to 10 presenters at 9 different booths at once. Way too noisy and its just gonna give you a headache! Step into one of the booths (Hashtags) and hang out with me for a while. Maybe you’ll feel like Joseph Omansky does if you do:
And for that I bought him a beer on http://www.yougotbeer.com 
(ok, I have other reasons too)
#tips for new Twitter users or even experienced ones
- Try a Tool! I use Tweetdeck but hear Hootsuite & others are OK.
- Tweetdeck give you multiple columns, easier to see Hashtags
- Tools let you organize faster
- The basic version are free and if you saw I told ya to try it I’ll help you out
- Hangout in a hastag for a bit first.
- You’ll be surprised who you do make friends with.
- You’ll learn about other hashtags that might interest you even more.
- Look for Twitter Chats that interest you! #Link josepf.co/TwitChats
- The #Link is from my Bit.ly Pro account — I did not start the Public List
- The format was created by Robert Swanwick (@swanwick)
- You can also follow on @twchat
- Try Hashable & Stay Tuned for Twylah.com.
- I bite, Hashable doesn’t.
- Inside the Beta of Twylah.com and it looks killer, see mine.
- Review on Twylah.com and Analytics.
I appreciate the info- even twitter doesnt have all the anwers to how we communicate on twitterand it is evolving daily /weekly
Love how you take situations and show how to turn it around to a learning event.
You are a great storyteller. Such a good way of telling just what you think with out holding back but making it relevant to the reader.
And no I wont stop following you. Too much good info.
Joseph,
Thx for linking to the Twitter Chat Schedule. Each new person that sees that list is another person who might be matched with a community that is just right for them.
The problem with your strategy of tweeting from one account is that it assumes that everyone is following your strategy of stream filtering. While there is certainly a certain portion that is doing this, I am not sure it will become mainstream. I think the userbase probably overlaps significantly with the userbase for RSS feedreaders and that is a relatively small segment of web users.
So, I think there is some room to tweet on different accounts for different interests so that those who just watch their follow stream receive less noise.
Thx for the great post. Very thought provoking. Wld love to be linked to any good twitter or other collaboration tech that you recommend.
Cheers,
Swan
Aw. So, you took it like a man…and blinked back those tears? Who the hell would want to hurt YOU? Yikes…I get distracted for *one* weekend with family events and I miss an unfollowing event? Or were they just kidding? Sorry…I’m still in weekend-mode. Trying to pick up the thread…I wish my monitor were bigger than 17″. (Yeah, I’ll bet you hear that a lot.) I need more rows for my TweetDeck…
Thanks for sharing how you manage your Twitter stream. There are a number of different tools and strategies and I love sharing different productivity tips with my clients. I tried using multiple IDs for a while, but found it not to my benefit. Hashtags and lists are much easier for the way that I organize. I look at Twitter like a cocktail party. Sometimes I may be interested in a conversation and sometimes I might not be. I would not eliminate an invitation to someone just because they have other interests that do not always match mine. If someone tweets on some topics that interest me I read and comment. If they tweet on some that don’t — I ignore and move on.
Thanks for the post! I agree it gets a little (or a lot) daunting to choose who to follow and to actually really keep up with those people afterwards. There has to be an easier way! Twylah will help with some of these issues…Onward! PS Loved the Forrest Gump video!!
Yes, it’s true, once you follow 500 people or more, your “All Friends” stream will often move too quickly to read (let alone jump into it) — and that’s when your customized columns in Tweetdeck of Hootsuite become invaluable! How does someone get moved from All Friends to a customized column? When they converse or reTweet.
During slower periods, however, I do like to jump into All Friends and initiate coversations, just to make sure I’m not overlooking any potential engagers.
You’re posts are always so ‘instructional’. I love your approach.
A couple of months ago I tried something really outrageous. (Well, I think it was; you might disagree.)
I was being followed on Twitter by a couple of tweeps who weren’t creepy enough to block, but definitely not the sort I would ever follow back or want to get better acquainted with. One, for example, was a TV reviewer in Australia. I live in the US and don’t have a TV…
So I DMed them, explained (as much as I could in under 140 characters) why we had no common interest, and asked them nicely to unfollow me. Both DID! Without a peep of disagreement. I was surprised.
BTW, I have not had a bit of luck with TweetDeck, but I like HootSuite and your video on using TweetDeck for LinkedIn inspired me to figure out how to do something similar with HootSuite. Not as fully connected as Twitter, but it helps.
Both informative and hilarious. And no, I won’t stop following you. Thanks for writing this!
Comment way way way overdue. My friend, you are who you are and I love you dearly. All I need to say, right?
Jackie
If I hadn’t found you through the #usguys chat and discovered what an awesome person you are, this post would have made me follow you anyway.
Thanks for being so helpful.
Er, the hashable.com link is dead. Looks like it should be hashable.com/beta.
Sorry, but this just seems too complicated. My mind is a perfectly fine network manager.
“I stopped following @Josepf because of his poetry tweets” — that’s kinda cute actually.
I find myself these days regularly referring to the “room full of 100 people” when I try to explain, if only to myself, behavior patterns and trends of diverse sets of folks. 100 people is enough, I think to establish the broad spectrum of folks’ behaviors. And to draw a major simplification of these folks, I sometimes consider them “voices”.
The tweeter un-following you for poetry tweets, its a child’s voice he/she is using to express dissonance. Could just as well have said, “@Josepf wasn’t nice to me” — and there’s always going to be voices like that in a room full of 100 people.
Perhaps a counter-argument to shaving the following down, but keeping the trend of increasing numbers is that in the room full of 100 people maybe 10 of them will always like what you have to say, 40 will often, 40 sometimes, and 10 hardly ever. And you likewise them with similar ratio.
But more so than broadcasters—we are fisherman. Cast the net. 100 fishies that come back with it will break down into different markets. Let the net get bigger and bigger. The ratios will always be the same, but what do you like, tuna? keep the tuna for yourself then, and sell the swordfish and other fishies off.
At some point the following becomes a virtuous growth, out of doing the thing you love doing. I think it would be counterproductive to throttle yourself on behalf of the 10-30% of followers you catch in your net who don’t like the poetry tweets, or what have you. Let the burden be on them to opt out.
Hey Josepf!
I love this post! You had me cracking up, but I also just learned so much. I really haven’t learned to maximize twitter as a platform, and I really under use tweetdeck. I’ll be coming back to implement some of your specific tips. So glad to have found you via #usguys!
I definitely agree that you have to use a tool like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, etc. to be able to effectively manage the content overload. There’s lots of random discussions going on. In order to effectively filter through the noise, you need to create lists and be able to manage different conversations by creating columns. That’s the way I manage it all anyway…
Hi Josepf ….you were kind enough to comment on my blog so here I am, checking out yours. I had to tell you I just LOVE this image of Tom Hanks (aka Forrest Gump) running ahead of all his followers with your headline, it made me laugh. Reminded me of the time I saw a bunch of zombie-like people following Dustin Hoffman down a Bloor Street sidewalk in Toronto, I really couldn’t imagine having to deal with that all the time.
At first glance of your site I am very impressed, I’ve got to try spend time with this. Navigating this stuff does not come easily to me, I have almost 15,000 followers on Twitter and yet I got them the hard way — just clicking manually on the pages of folks I found interesting or who people I found interesting were following or whatever. I don’t use any programs like Tweetdeck or whatever, just good old fashioned Twitter. I have always wondered how people get so many followers. I don’t want to “buy” them, it is important to me to be discriminating, at least to some extent. I also block a lot of folks, if they appear SPAM to me and I wonder how many folks with high follower counts and “auto follow back” programs never bother to do that.
In any case thanks for introducing yourself and I look forward to trying to figure some of this stuff out.
Jesse
Josepf -
People have unFollowed me because I Tweet too much. Oh well. What do they know. It’s their loss anyway!!
A request: When you have a free (ha ha – yeah sure) minute, could you provide a mini-overview of the hashtags that you list above or is there a list of hashtags and descriptions somewhere?:
#oneshotwednesday
#haiku
#fourwords
#genychat
#imcchat
#gogyohka
#theprompt
#usLiveWell
#mbtweetrace
Do you know #KM
Any other good hashtags? Or lists?
Josepf -
People have unFollowed me because I Tweet too much. Oh well. What do they know. It’s their loss anyway!!
A request: When you have a free (ha ha – yeah sure) minute, could you provide a mini-overview of the hashtags that you list above or is there a list of hashtags and descriptions somewhere?:
#oneshotwednesday
#haiku
#fourwords
#genychat
#gogyohka
#theprompt
#usLiveWell
#mbtweetrace
Do you know #KM
Any other good hashtags? Or lists?