Twitter Explained…

Yesterday my twice-monthly networking group met.  I didn’t have a guest speaker lined up, and so we used the last few minutes of our meet-up to talk about twitter and social media.  I asked the question, “How many of you have a twitter account?”  I was the only one with my hand raised.

Because of that, I’m doing a series of articles over the next couple weeks on social media, starting with this article “What is Twitter?”

If you go to the About page on the twitter site you’ll see that twitter defines itself this way:

Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.

That’s an exciting statement, but tells me nothing.  The second statement on the site is a little bit more clear:

Twitter asks “what’s happening” and makes the answer spread across the globe to millions, immediately.

The basis of the idea for twitter is that when you talk to people you care about, what’s the first questions you ask them?

“What’s going on?”

“How are things?”

“What are you doing?”

Twitter gives people the ability to follow those they are interested in and learn the answer to the question “What are you doing?” at any moment.

Initially, it sounded a little too self-involved for me.

My Impression

I’ve been using twitter for about 5 months and am in no way as progressed as @jeremysaid or @waynesutton (those are handles, or people’s user name on twitter.  They are denoted by the ‘@’ sign in front of the username.  Mine is @howtogeekon).  Those two guys work for a company called Twine Interactive, a social media company that is bringing marketing into this new decade.

I’ll admit, I really didn’t “get” twitter for the first few months.  I’m not totally sure I get it now.  At first glance, it looked like noise and a complete time-suck.

I found a lot of people talking about completely random things that I have very little interest in.  What do I care if @jeremysaid went to @thePitBBQ today for the 20^th time this month?  (Seriously, you twine guys eat there way too much… you’re going to turn into BBQ).

I followed a few other people – collegiate and professional athletes from my alma mater as well as a few coaches.  Yeah, I know you’re “pumped up for the game tonight,” but how is that relevant to me, especially when that particular statement – word for word – is tweeted by every other NFL player just before his game starts?

Noise and Distraction

Honestly, all of this seemed like noise and distraction in a world already screaming at me to “stop what you’re doing and look over here.”

But, as football recruiting season hit its climax, I started to understand that my alma mater’s recruiting coordinator was using twitter to get potential recruits pumped about the school and it’s culture.

Sure, that’s just marketing fluff, but marketing is what brings dollar bill$ to businesses.  When done correctly, marketing brings jobs to job seekers.

#hashtags

Then I learned about hashtags from a friend of mine who now works at @ignitesma (Ignite Social Media, another Raleigh-based social media marketing firm.)  Hashtags are a way to group tweets.  You put a hashtag in a tweet so that other users can find that tweet.  Or better yet, so that other users can find you.

I tried using a hashtag in a tweet about one of my articles and within hours had several more followers on twitter.  Since I’ve been using hashtags, I’ve seen twitter jump up to #5 on the list of sites that refer traffic to How to Geek On.

When I searched for hashtags using twitter or hashtags.org I started to find other users who were tweeting about things similar to what I was tweeting about.  I started following those people and used the news articles, blog postings, and events they tweeted about to help my followers and add content to my newsletter.

RT: Retweeting

My followers learned about the tweets I heard about because I retweeted those messages.

Other people have retweeted my messages exposing me to a whole other group of people who may be ready to use my help in navigating the job market or who may simply be interested in learning more about the Raleigh-Durham techie job market from my newsletter.

Job Market

Job market?  Did he say Job market?  Finally, this article becomes relevant.  I bet you thought I’d forgotten what this site was all about in the first place, helping technical professionals move on to their next great gig!

I started using the search box to find career-related people across the country.  I found several I already knew, like Raleigh-based technical recruiters @brentjohnson123 and @fkendley.  I found career coaches like Seattle’s @InterviewCoach.

Suddenly, twitter started becoming more relevant.  I found a marketing professional by tweeting that I needed marketing help in Raleigh, NC.  I haven’t put her to use yet, but fully intend to in the next few months.

So what could twitter do for job seekers?

Check back next week to find out.