Roland Millward

Archive for July, 2010

I talk to many people about Twitter and many of them look at me rather blankly when I tell them that through Twitter I have increased my business, raised my profile, built a huge network of business contacts, met some lovely people and made friends!

The first response revolves around how can that be possible with just 140 characters in a message or ‘tweet’?

Words are powerful and wherever did you see a rule that said, “Words are only powerful in large quantities?” The word STOP could prevent someone from killed when attempting to cross a road! One word is all it may take to save a life!

With Twitter it is the small sentences that eventually build into a larger picture. People following your tweets can learn about what you do, what you like, your hobbies and favourite sport. In other words all the things that they would find out over a period of conversation with you in a face to face situation. In fact because the length of tweets is so restrictive people take more interest. If I were to write my life story and publish it on the Internet and lets say it was 10,000 words long. How many people would look at that read it all and say, “I know this guy?” Probably very few even if I sent the link out on Twitter. It would be just the same if someone came up to you at a party and tried to tell you their life story over the next 4 hours! However if you learned a little about them and liked them you would probably keep in touch and find out more later.

Twitter works just as do many sentences in many conversations. They are ongoing and even if spaced out over many days, months or years people begin to get to know each other.

There is a great deal of power in those 140 characters and they must never be underestimated! If you need help in understanding how Twitter can work for you and your business please contact me today!

How do you use Twitter? Have you been successful? Please leave any comments in the box below.

One of the great things about Twitter is that it allows users to create ways to use it to their own advantage. One of the good things that Twitter users have found is that using the hashtag # they can create groups that can talk to each other about their favourite subject, use it just to meet up for a chat or find newsworthy items. When people tweet and want the subject to be found they include the hashtag in their tweet.

Using tools like MarketMeTweet, Tweeteck and Hootsuite allow you to set up a column that will search for everyone adding the aprticular hashtag to their tweets

Here are some examples that I have found that people like to use.

#FF or #FollowFriday – every Friday you can recommend people that you think are worth following using the Follow Friday tag.

#WaterCoolerMoment – if you work from home and find it lonely and you miss those moments that office workers get around the water cooler then Water Cooler Moment is for you.

#elevensestime – this is very similar to water Cooler Moment and at 11:00 am each day (this has been a UK event) people meet up and chat for a while whilst having their coffee / tea break.

#F1 – Formula One motor racing fans love this one particularly during a live race.

other sporting tags for you to see are #tennis #golf #worldcup

#bbcQT – this one follows the debate on the BBC TV Show Question Time. Some people also use #BBCQuestiontime and #Questiontime

#BGT – another TV Show Britain’s Got Talent

#Snow – this was a very well used tag at the beginning of 2010 for the coldest winter that Britain has had in many years

To see how popular a hashtag is you can visit http://hashtags.org

These are just a few examples and as you can see they are useful for anyone wanting to follow a certain event, subject, find news or meet people. The possibilities for using these tags is seemingly endless as people find more uses for them.

Using hastags can also enable you to find like minded people to follow and likewise for others to find you. In business you could use them to locate new customers or set up a tag to keep in touch with your own customers and promote your business.

Why not set up a search column in your Twitter application and discover how you can make the most of hashtags?

Please leave a comment and some of the hashtags that you like to use.