My first real post involves Twitter because let's be honest, it's all sorts of amazing and has gotten me all sorts of awesome things and really you should give it a go if you haven't already. If you already have 1) kudos and 2) skim through the stuff that you should already know (or read it anyways, it won't hurt you). This part is for the newbies, don't be shy twitter doesn't bite. So what is twitter? A real quick over view is it's your thoughts in 140 characters. For some this is GREAT, for others this proves challenging. It's also a great way to share stuff with a lot of people quickly. Honestly, it's my first source of news. If you don't have a twitter account, sign up protip #2: take some time to consider your name. Mine is long and I wish I had chosen a shorter one, but sadly my real name was taken and this was my alternative. If I could do it over again, I'd pick a shorter one since your name and take up a lot of characters when people tweet at you. Tweeting is what you do when you use twitter and putting @whomever makes it special and let's them see you are talking to or about them. There's also #hashtags which links you to anyone else tweeting about the #hashtag topic. Twitter will help you with more details but these two items are the main things to keep in mind. When conversing on a topic, pick a short #topic that let's everyone into the conversation easily without having to go through everything you or someone else is talking about to find it. This way you can have multiple conversations going and it's easy to keep straight.
Ok, so you're on Twitter. Now who to follow and how do you get people to follow you? You need to ask yourself what your purpose of being on Twitter is. Mine was to make friends in a new city where I didn't know a lot of people. I've done splendidly with this. Others choose it to market their business. It's kinda hard (and probably unprofessional) to do both with the same account. So decide and go from there. If you want the business side, well search marketing and I'm sure you'll find tons of information. I on the other hand don't want to talk about things I don't know, so I'll share making friends with people. Just like making friends in real life, you should be yourself and talk about things you enjoy and want to share. Being positive always helps :) Furthermore, try to share things people may want to converse about.
I love a great piece of toast, but it's hard to have a conversation about toast (unless #foodiechats is your theme in which case people will happily discuss this). Oh yeah, you'll probably want a public profile rather than locked unless you think it will hurt your career. If you do pick public make sure you remember that your tweets are out there for all the world to see. Scary yes, but how will you make friends if no one can see what you are saying? Now, how to find people. If you have real life friends you'd like to keep in touch with, add them first. You can always go through their follows to see others you may like. Also, if you really love something search tweets with that topic. You'll find other people who are at least talking about it. I like to read through timelines and see if I like what they tweet about and how much they tweet.
They may be awesome, but 500 tweets a day may prove too much to show up in my feed (in which case check out the lists feature). Now, as you follow people you may find that some follow you back. Some will be real people and some will be spam bots that picked up on some random thing you said and think you'll click on their scammy links because they followed you/@mentioned you.
As you grow comfortable with tweeting and meeting people and conversing you'll find all sorts of doors open up. You'll make new friends, find new places to go and shop or eat, and be able to pursue all sorts of interests with people who share them. Pretty amazing right? Also, if you have some legit places you follow, you'll find they do contests. Usually something as simple as following them and retweeting (RT) a tweet is all you have to do to enter. Some are scammy, which is why it's important you pay attention to who is doing the contest (check to see if it's a verified account at least, if not a place you've been to).
True story, I won a $500 gift card to an amazing bar just by retweeting a tweet for a contest they had running (the contest was to #EatTheMenu and I'm happily working my way through their menu).
Other amazing things I've received through twitter:
- AWESOME friends
- my current apt
- klout perks (more on this later)
- events where more often than not free music/food/liquor/socializing is involved
If you haven't tried Twitter, I highly recommend it. You'd be amazed at how many businesses use it to provide deals, sales and resolve customer service issues. Plus you'll meet some great people and probably get to know your city a little bit better (assuming you live in one, if not you'll know some amazing people to see should you make your way to a city). It's also great for general question asking if you don't like searching the internet and sifting through a million things, such as to find a place try go when traveling. I find it's a great way to pass the time when waiting on trains/busses or those other bits of time when you're free but don't have enough time to really get into anything.
Why am I writing this blog? Because having become recently unemployed, I have a lot of free time on my hands when not applying for jobs. Besides, even if you have a great paying job and tons of money, who doesn't like free stuff? I mean good free stuff, not a free sticker if you send a SASE off to some place (although I do love stickers). So, these are my personal tried and true ways I've gotten awesome things without spamming a bunch of people, signing up for "deals" that result in my getting a million junk emails a day and other unscrupulous tactics. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know. I'm happy to try new things and let's be honest, I've got nothing but time on my hands, and they say idle hands are the work of the devil so let's get busy shall we?
Oh and protip #1: get a junk email account if you are concerned with an influx of emails. This is also handy advice should you find your inbox overrun with companies letting you know about their latest sales. I like to use one email for stores/promotions/contests and other things I probably won't miss should I not check my email constantly and another email that has really important things I know I'll check (don't want to lose a job offer amongst the sale ads). If you're really slick, you'll set up your email with labels and filters and have it take care of all this for you in one handy place. But do whatever you find easier.
