The way I use Twitter
Accounts
I have two major Twitter accounts. (My cats also have Twitter accounts, but I’m not going there right now.) In addition, I have set up Twitter accounts for several small businesses community organizations over the last few years, and still monitor/troubleshoot two of them. My two primary accounts are:
- ☞ @mwrk, my business account
- ☞ @katnagel, my personal account
Who I follow
If I’m following you from @mwrk, it’s probably because:
- ☞ You are a colleague I’ve worked with, or we’re acquainted through a professional email discussion list
- ☞ You are a current or former client
- ☞ You tweet about technical communications, usability, accessibility, content strategy, web development, or instructional design/training
- ☞ You write interesting or insightful blogs, articles or books in one of the fields listed above
- ☞ You share interesting links
- ☞ Something you’ve tweeted has been retweeted by someone I follow, and has attracted my attention
As @mwrk, I follow mostly technical writers, web developers, usability specialists, content managers, technical editors, and other people who tweet about technical communication issues. @katnagel follows a variety of other writers, scientists, news reporters, knitters, and a whole bunch of interesting and funny people. I split my social media activity in two because I was having trouble focusing. This way, it’s much easier to concentrate on work-related stuff while I’m working. I follow selectively from each account, and do not automatically follow back just because someone follows me.
What I look for
- ☞ trends in my several professional areas of activity
- ☞ news about colleagues
- ☞ links to interesting articles
- ☞ tips for using my favorite software tools
- ☞ reviews of new books and software
What I tweet about
- ☞ my experiences with projects, colleagues and clients
- ☞ recommendations for useful books/sites
- ☞ techcomm-related questions
- ☞ web development questions
- ☞ links to interesting articles I’m reading
- ☞ links to professional events I’m planning to attend
- ☞ cool technology
- ☞ links to blog posts (mine and others’)
I also retweet interesting, useful, or funny stuff that others have tweeted.
The tools I use
On my desktop and laptop computers, I use YoruFukurou for daily activity. YF is a Twitter client recommended by a New Zealand webdesigner/techblogger friend. (Thanks, @Miraz!) It has a compact, tabbed interface that occupies a single visible column on my screen, but gives me quick access to the timelines, mentions, saved searches, and favorites for eight Twitter accounts. It also allows me to easily retweet something I read in one timeline from any of the other accounts.
Once or twice a month I do triage on both accounts, looking at analytics, unfollowing spammers and people who no longer tweet interesting stuff, moving writers who only tweet about knitting or religion from my business account to my personal account, and so on. For that, I’m currently using SocialBro.
On my iPod Touch, I used to use Tweetie. Then Twitter bought the company, changed the app’s name to Twitter for iPhone, and added a whole bunch of features I don’t want. They’ve also been messing with the interface. Grrrrr. I’ve tried a dozen others, but haven’t found any that do all the things that Tweetie used to do without doing anything irritating or frustrating, so I cycle among two or three apps.
The way I use Twitter has evolved over several years. I expect I will continue refining my tools and techniques, and I’ll update this post with any changes.
Taking advantage of some down time…
…to finish the redesign of my business website and update the content. Things will be shuffling around for the next week or so, before the dust clears. Current news will be on my personal blog at Life, the Universe, Everything.
Go Forth and Conquer
[Title stolen from TechCrunch.]
One of the things I do on Sunday afternoons is read stuff that makes me think. Not always directly-work-related stuff, but interesting stuff that might kick my mental butt into taking a new direction, or make me think about myself and my work in new ways.
I have a couple of regular go-to places, like Live Science and Arts and Letters Daily. I also collect interesting links during the work week from the people I follow on Twitter and some of my Facebook friends. Not directly-work-related links—those I read during normal online time—but odd stuff that catches my eye but doesn’t fit with the topics I’m researching for work.
Today, the headline that grabbed my attention and got a deathgrip on one of my otherwise-unoccupied neurons, was a TechCrunch guest post by Aaron Levie, the founder and CEO of Box.net.
Now, I’ve been a fan of Box.net as a collaboration tool since shortly after its beta opened, but online storage isn’t a topic I consider especially inspiring. It was the title in the Twitter link that intrigued me; “Go Forth and Conquer” sounded like something that might improve my outlook on this gloomy, grey, cold October afternoon.
It did.
Levie points out three strategies that can keep a software company from drowning during the startup years. They look to me like good advice for freelance web designers and tech writers, too.
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“Make sure you’re constantly doing something that wasn’t possible 3 years ago.”
The speed of change is increasing. We may not be inventing a whole new technology ourselves, but we freelancers can seize the opportunity to apply someone else’s less-than-3yr-old technology to a familiar task to serve our clients’ needs. Whether it’s using cloud storage to transfer working files among members of a project team, implementing new instructional design techniques, or taking advantage of new features in the latest version of WordPress to streamline our workflow to meet tighter deadlines, doing new things (or old things in new ways) can mean the difference between success and bare survival in a sagging economy.
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“Do something you’re extremely passionate about.”
Sometimes, we let necessity drive us to do work we dislike in order to pay the mortgage or put food on the table. I’ve done this several times. It doesn’t work for very long. Really.
Oh, it’s fine when everything goes well—when there are no unusual on-the-job stresses, and when health and family life are progressing normally—but, eventually, something will go wrong and it all goes to hell. If I’m not working on something I really care about, something I feel is truly important and involves skills that make me feel useful and valuable, something that I really and truly enjoy, I start getting crabby. Nobody likes me when I’m a crabby person. It irritates my husband, and doesn’t thrill clients, either.
If I’m not passionate about my work, and about working for this client, then it gets harder and harder for me to concentrate on the things I need to pay attention to, and to produce the quality of work that will make me proud to add this project to my portfolio. This is deadly for anyone, but especially for a freelancer. Without a killer piece or three in my portfolio that I can describe with passionate enthusiasm, it’s hard to convince prospects to trust me with their projects. And without work that I absolutely love, dealing with health setbacks and family emergencies would leave me chronically anxious and depressed. -
“Keep looking up (and never look down).”
The worst times of my life, professionally, were the times I forgot to keep my mind focused on what I wanted to accomplish and, instead, spent way too much time dwelling on what my competition was doing and second-guessing my old decisions.
Ack! Ptui! Don’t do that.
Don’t give up your dream too soon. Don’t let discouraging comments from others make you doubt your ability to succeed. Of course, we need to consider feedback that will help us improve, but there is no reason to accept uncritically every mean-spirited thing someone says about you and your talent. If things don’t work out the way you expect, review the decisions that got you there once to see if there is anything you can learn from the experience, then lock ‘em away and go on to the next thing.
Lessons learned on this October Sunday afternoon:
- I need to keep learning new stuff, and using what I learn.
- I need to be self-analytical and realistic without losing the passion and drive that got me started in the first place.
Testing…testing…
Domain transferred? Check!
WP installed? Check!
Theme installed? Chec…oops! Theme isn’t compatible with WP 3.0. Bummer. Back to the drawing board.