Roland Millward

Archive for August, 2010

You will probably notice that many of the people that you follow on Twitter have become inactive. Sadly some people die but the vast majority of people that stop tweeting simply have become bored or failed to understand Twitter and ceased to use it.

How can you find out who in your Twitter Following list is no longer tweeting?

One online tool to use is Untweeps that will search for people in your Following list that have not tweeted for 30 days (or longer if you choose). You can then select each individual and unfollow them. Untweeps have been prevented from using a ‘select all’ system as Twitter does not like mass unfollow systems.

It is best to check your Twitter account fairly regularly as you will be amazed how quickly the list will grow of inactive people that you are following. One tip to pass on to you is that when you decide to follow someone check when they last tweeted. If it is a month or so ago they are most likely not worth following and you will only end up removing them from your following list.

You may be asking why worry? Well, when you look at your followers to following numbers how do they compare? It looks much better to have more followers than the number you are following, so why follow people who are not tweeting? Twitter also has limits on how many people you can follow. For example if you follow 2000 people and have less followers you will not be able to follow any more people. This may prevent you from following someone worthwhile and yet in your list are people who are not active.

Set aside time each month to run Untweeps and keep your list up to date.

We are all creatures of habit and when it comes to public speaking we all seem to eager to adopt some bad habits!

In this article I would like to discuss those habits that we call word whiskers. What are word whiskers?

Word whiskers are those moments when we use expressions such as er, um, oh, ok, so, you see, you know. They are generally words or short phrases that we use to fill in time whilst we are thinking of what to say next. Most speakers do not realise that they are having a problem with word whiskers, which can make it all the more difficult to stop using them. When we listen to speakers that constantly say ‘um or er’ it can become very annoying and as a result the speaker loses our attention.

The best way to overcome this problem is first of all to listen to a recording or watch a video of our talks. Note how many times we use the same expressions. Next if possible ban those words from your vocabulary and give the talk again, recording it and see how you have performed. When you speak get in the habit of pausing when you need to think rather than using a word whisker to fill in the time. Pausing is a useful tool to let people know that you are about to say something important or to give them chance to digest what you said last. During that very brief pause you can gather your thoughts rather than saying ‘er’ or another phrase.

Many people and for some reason particularly trainers like to say ‘ok’ at the end of many sentences. It is probably a habit picked up because they have wanted to make sure that their students have understood the point just made but it does become nothing more than a habit after a while. In cases where you need to repeat yourself try and do so using different words and phrases. For example our trainer who may occasionally need to check on the understanding of students could say. “Are we all happy with this, any questions?”; “Before we move on – any questions?”; I want to make sure that we have all got that so please let me know if there is something you don’t understand.” All of those phrases are better than saying “OK?” and there are another 100 ways you could ask the same thing, so do develop a repertoire of phrases to use. It is also vital that you review and change them regularly before they end up becoming your new word whiskers or locked in trademark expressions.

Why not from time to time have your talks recorded and sent to an another speaker for review? You will note that I offer a video analysis service that can pick up on word whiskers and other speaking techniques that will help you to improve and maintain your speaking skills. Click here for more details.