I’m sure you know by now that Twitter is a fun, effective, and fast-paced place to connect with people online – and that it can also be a great tool for your jewelry business.
However, Twitter can also wind up devouring huge chunks of your time unless you have a good plan for using it and organizing your activity there.
Donna Scott shares an extremely useful, in-depth list of 100 Twitter Tips and Tools that can help you:
- get connected
- find relevant gems of information among the masses of tweets
- keep your own Twitter activity organized and efficient
- get more value from your Twitter usage.
Donna’s 100 tips and tools contain great ideas and resources for Tweeple of all experience levels!
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
What a great wealth of information….thanks for posting this. I have to figure out how to get rid of some folks who’ve never followed me, to make my list more even…I’m off by about 80 I think.
Thanks, Dee!
I used to feel that out of politeness I should follow everyone who followed me. But I did a “follow purge” recently, because I’d politely followed several folks whose tweets provided more clutter than value for me.
In the process of “unfollowing” them, I discovered that nearly all of those clutter-tweeters weren’t in the jewelry industry anyway. Most of them are in “internet marketing” or “social media”, where their main goal is amassing huge lists of followers and then tweeting various forms of advertising to them. Yuck.
So after “unfollowing” all the non-relevant junk tweeters on my list, I now have a wonderful list of jewelry folk I love to connect with, and whose tweets I love to read!
It made a huge difference in the quality of my Twitter experience.
I decided it’s like the rest of the social media universe – it’s best to focus on connecting with quality folks who share my interests!
I just can’t keep up with the demands on my time either so have to have a good think about what I want to achieve. There are so many ways to keep in touch at the moment and I know Tweeting is a great way to do it but how many hours are there in a day…? I just wonder if Twitter is going to become tomorrow’s My Space. Everyone is now on Facebook but give it another few weeks and there will be something else and yet more demands!! Thanks for posting though
I know what you mean! There’s a dizzying number of social venues out there. Yesterday’s hotspot is today’s dying site, and a ton of new ones are popping up every day.
You’re absolutely right about taking the time to have a good think about what you want to achieve before spending a lot of valuable time on social sites.
Also that it’s a good idea to keep the time you invest in those sites proportionate to the value you get from them.
As far as using any of it for my jewelry business, I decided my best bet was to determine:
1) Who do I want to connect with – my targeted customers, other jewelry artists, or ???
2) Where do those people I want to connect with hang out online?
3) Of those online gathering spots, which one(s) do I like best – as far as how they’re set up to get around, the way members can participate there, the kind of folks who hang out there, the ease of connecting with people in a useful way, etc.?
Then pick just one or two social sites to focus on, and ignore the rest until you’re ready at some point either to expand into using more social sites, or to drop the ones you’ve been using and try a new one.
Not all social sites are useful or user-friendly. And not all of them resonate with everyone. Also DEFINITELY not all of them provide value for the time you spend on them!
I’ve found that for me, some of the really popular sites have turned out to be ones that I personally don’t enjoy at all.
I try to keep social networking at a level where it’s fun and I’m getting value from it, yet it doesn’t start eating into the other things I need to do for my business.
I just pick the site(s) I want to concentrate on currently, and on “computer days” I spend about 30 minutes total socializing / networking on my chosen sites.
And you’re right, most social sites probably have a finite lifespan and will either evolve to keep up with the times, or eventually fade out while other sites take their place.
Love the post, full of really useful info thanks
Millie (GotRocks4Sale.com) and I joined forces to learn about Twitter. I’m a hands on learner, but like many people time is an issue. Rena, I like your plan, block out the ‘computer time’; good discipline. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with all the changes I’ve made to the two websites but I am determined to get involved socially.
The first thing we learned about is all the non-productive chit-chat; and running into a couple of people who bombard, over and over again, a link to their website that seems more than a bit rude.
The fun part was seeing an enormous amount of traffic to our sites in one day; didn’t sell anything but the attention may turn into something!
Great post. I am slowly realizing twitter is not just another site to waste time on. It is a great way to share insights and sales with others. Thanks for the article.
I am loving Twitter. I find it is a great way to connect with like minded people (polymer clay, jewelry, beading, crafty folks) and offer polymerclaytips and tidbits that I wouldn’t normally write a whole post on my blog about.
I too only follow relevant Twitterers. There is only so much time, so why clutter up your life with junk you don’t need. I hate spam and I hate it when people are constantly pushing their wares at me.
Twitter is a place to connect, not an never ending commercial. I would never do that to someone, I don’t want them doing it to me. That’s what’s great about Twitter. You can follow who you want.
I’ve met some fantastic people through Twitter that I may never have found otherwise. I think it is an excellent tool!
I never considered the twitter as an useful tool for my jewellery business, but now I have changed my mind, I’ll try to follow your advises, just one problem is – lack of time, jewellery making is very time consuming game.