Two practical lessons about Twitter

There’s a literal boat-load of activity going on where Twitter is the common factor. One example: I posted earlier about Twitter hashtag overload.

Time now for something a lot more positive.

I’ve picked two things that are well worth giving your time and attention to if you’re trying to determine the value of Twitter to you, just like everyone I know is doing. Including me.

First, Twitter for PR (Keynote & YouTube version) by Corinne Weisgerber, an assistant professor of communications at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, USA.

It’s one of the best presentations I’ve yet seen that credibly explains how Twitter can be a useful tool from a PR point of view, a major point I make myself in workshops and presentations I do about social media and PR (including the weekly webinars I’m doing wearing my Bond-i hat).

Weisgerber’s presentation is especially compelling with its use of embedded video, making it easy to grasp key points and thus aid your overall understanding.

Here’s the slideshow:

Hat tip: Matt Rhodes, FreshNetworks.

Next, read Twitter sucks, so change your friends, an excellent post by London-based musician, writer and teacher Steve Lawson in which he beautifully trashes much of the utter drivel about Twitter that has been published in some of the UK mainstream media in recent weeks, notably by The Times.

There’s so much that’s copy-and-pastable about Steve’s post to demonstrate how much I agree with what he says that it’s hard to know where to click the mouse.

So let me focus on his conclusion:

[…] Twitter – and the raft of ‘micro-blogging’ services that are springing up, and will continue to mutate – is changing the way we communicate online, and we’re all the better for it. It’s not going to disappear, and 3 years from now, we’ll all have a twitter name (or hopefully an OpenID-authenticated cross-platform equivalent) the way we have an email address.

“Changing the way we communicate online” – that’s the view that strikes me as especially convincing.

I’ll conclude by saying that the bottom line quoted here won’t take anything away from Steve’s post, so go and read it in its entirety and add your opinion to the growing conversation on his blog.

Finally, see these related points of view:

Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  1. Hutch Carpenter

    Neville – thank you for your kind words. The post about microblogging marginalizing email got a really strong uptake over the weekend, and nicely coincided with the lifestreaming panel at SXSW. In your post here, you note the the change in communication that these tools foster. That’s so true. It seems as if we humans have a latent tendency to share a lot more than we typically do in emails and IM. I think Steve Lawson’s point is spot-on – these new tools are changing the way we communicate.

  2. Det handlar inte om mejl | weconverse

    […] Och du som är ledare och chef. Tänk på att andra gör som du gör, inte som du säger. Och vi respekterar och litar på dom som är som (och gör som) vi. [Uppdatering 2009-03-16: Neville Hobson, en av de som verkligen inspirerar mig, bidrar idag med det i sammanhanget intressanta inlägget Two practical lessons about Twitter.] […]

Comments are closed.
Close