Let me get something straight. I’m not too busy to tweet, which I guess is obvious from a brief glance at the @cheltsocmedcafe Twitter stream, or any of my other Twitter streams (I look after 5 in total). Three of my Twitter accounts are professional and another is for the SMC so I need to tweet to earn a living and keep the café alive.
The problem is that I find Twitter a distraction as well as a useful source of information and humour. And I find that I end up tweeting a lot more than I need to, when I should be focusing on other work. It reminds me of being at junior school when I used to talk to my friends in class. We’d try to be discreet and quiet but then we’d get caught and the teacher would shout at us. If Twitter is like the group of friends from my class then where is the teacher? Where is the person telling me to stop chattering and get to work?
I’m an adult. And a freelancer. I have no teacher to shout at me.
Am I going mad? Am I turning into one of those internet junkies you read about?
It is time for intervention! A few people have advised me to schedule my Twitter time and close TweetDeck when I’m not in ‘Tweet time’. But what about all my loyal fans who I arrogantly assume would wither away and die if I rationed my tweets too much? Is it time to engage in scheduled tweeting à la Rebecca Woodhead?
The SMC account thrives on interaction. I like to talk to our followers, share jokes, make useful RTs and so on…how will scheduled tweets work with this? Of course, the only way to find out is to give it a go. The latest version of TweetDeck has finally got it’s scheduled tweet capability working so there’s nothing holding me back! Next week there will be a mix of scheduled and normal tweets from the SMC account. I shall assign half an hour in the morning and half an hour at the end of the day to genuine tweeting time. In the middle there’ll be one or two scheduled announcements or witticisms (hopefully).
I’ll let you all know how it gets on but we’re keen to hear your perspective too. If you like the new approach (or if you hate it) then let us know!
Good luck with that – I’m sceptical I’m afraid. Surely the purpose of this type of communication is that it isn’t shackled by the processes of the past – ie print deadlines etc.
The beauty of Twitter (and the like) is that it is constant and immediate – I’ll be keen to see how the experiment goes, but I think you’ll find yourself clock watching, waiting for your time to tweet!
I have a feeling you may be right but thought it was worth a try!
I’m inclined to agree with the comments. (Some of) the value of twitter is that it can be spontaneous, it encourages quick, off the cuff responses and interactions. Its these parts of the process that help build relationships with the tweeter and the followers. That’s particularly important with professional feeds looking to gain an audience with potential and existing customers, clients, contacts and suchlike.
You can instantly tell the large ‘old’ corporations that have a twitter feed because ‘that’s what’s done now’, without engaging with their followers you’re left with a completely one way stream of product info, press releases and a feeling that the whole thing is sterile in some way.
An extreme example I know, but twitter is so fast paced that even after a hour or two the conversation has moved on and the initial interaction is lost.
There is another issue entirely of oversharing. (Possibly another post!?) Many services like Foursquare and Buzz can be automatically linked to Twitter creating a neverending tirade of junk. This does nothing but to overwhelm the feeds of people who may have interesting things to say, but this becomes buried in the noise spewing from their feed. Any value they may have to give instantly becomes lost.
I think the answer to both points is balance. IMHO the follows I find most valuable are informative, sharing what’s worthy rather than ‘everything’, engaging with people who @ them, and making the odd press release, announcement, event or two. Having said that, no one can stay on twitter all day, can they?
Wow – some extreme but thoughtful reactions are coming out in response to this post! I like your comments about the ‘oversharing’ too. Let me know if you’d like to write a guest post on this!