Pre Challenge Twitter Video

[Ken Montville]

I liked the pre-Challenge Twitter video.

I was thinking Ed might want to talk about blocking people or what to do when people "follow" you that you may not want to have as a "follower". A lot of them are not, er, family friendly.

I was also wondering about the concept of only keeping a small group of "follows" and "followers". I see so many people with tens of thousands of of follows and followers and I wonder what the concept is. Wouldn't it be better to have a gazillion people to tweet a message out to?

I wonder if I should set up a different (second) Twitter account specifically to start from scratch for the Challenge and Ed's instructions on how to use Twitter for maximum advantage??

Just some "top of mind" thoughts after I watched the video.

[Kim Terry Haynes]

I decided to set up a brand new, uncluttered Twitter for the challenge. I like to have things fresh and clean when I start a project!

[Ken Montville]

I went and set up a new account which was relatively easy to do and I was able to add it to Tweetdeck and it seems I can post to both accounts (separately or together) on Tweetdeck but I can only see my existing "old" account on Tweetdeck.

Is there a way to be able to toggle back and forth between accounts on Tweetdeck or at least get Tweetdeck to show the "new" account. I went to their support on the web and it just shows a bunch of FAQs and doesn't seem to help.

Any Tweetdeck gurus out there?

[Rheinard Korf]

The benefit of starting fresh is that you can start sorting people you follow early on and make real connections.

I personally love twitter lists. I have several private lists on which I list people with different kinds of purposes (on some of the lists I don't even follow the people on the list).

The real magic of twitter starts when your using twitter clients (like the official twitter mobile, twittelator, tweetdeck or seesmic). And as someone mentioned in another thread, you can also follow people using RSS.

Twitter also gets even more powerful when your tweets become useful (and not just titles and links to traffic spinning articles).

I'm happy with my 300 followers. I don't need 10 000 for my twitter goal (other accounts may fulfill those goals).

[lisahartwell]

I was thinking Ed might want to talk about blocking people or what to do when people "follow" you that you may not want to have as a "follower". A lot of them are not, er, family friendly.

I was also wondering about the concept of only keeping a small group of "follows" and "followers". I see so many people with tens of thousands of of follows and followers and I wonder what the concept is. Wouldn't it be better to have a gazillion people to tweet a message out to?

Re: blocking..I've rarely ever blocked anyone (only a weird guy who started making trouble for my business and had a number of Twitter personas so I didn't want him to be able to see me or sent @ comments). If you're not following them back then you never have to deal with what they are saying unless they are directing it at you. If you have followed them then unfollow or they could fill your DM (direct messages) box with all kinds of spam.

It's easy to fall into the trap of following everyone who follows you and trying to get as many followers as possible. But, many of those followers will only be there because they got a reciprocal follow (to boost their numbers). How many of those people who are only interested in the numbers do you think are actually reading a single thing you tweet?

If you only follow the people you are interested in then (a) you will be able to keep up with the conversation (and not get lost in a sea of irrelevant, uninteresting tweets) and (b) you are more likely to make a connection with your followers. It's better to have 50 followers who hang on your every word than 50,000 who don't even know who you are.

Lisa

[Beth Unlimited]

...It's better to have 50 followers who hang on your every word than 50,000 who don't even know who you are. -- Lisa

Agree! The other aspect to that is what you are tweeting. I've seen so many who only tweet #quotes or links just to keep their traffic up. The emphasis on social media means that we are to make connections with people -- so ask yourself, what am I tweeting that helps me improve the connection I have with whoever reads it? If you offer something of value (and maybe yes, occasionally that's a quote, a link, or a comment) then you're on the right track!

[Pam Firestone Brechlin]

I also think its important to mention that when creating your twitter account, make sure to fill in your profile. It will help people know what you are interested in so they can follow you.

[Sol Smiddy]

I also set up a completely new account for this years challenge, as far as I know it is not against their terms of service. Definitely recommend using a twitter client. Going to purchase twitterlator pro later today, but for the desktop I love seesmic, you can keep track of multiple accounts and only have what you really want to see on the home page.

[Ken Montville]

Good stuff. So, I'll set up another Twitter account and then start with a few people from the Challenge and roll from there.

It was interesting to find out that if I didn't follow back their stuff wouldn't end up in my stream. (thanks, Lisa) I guess I'm not as attuned to the nuances of Twitter as I could be.

I've been using Tweetdeck as a desktop client and Twitter for iPhone (formerly Tweetie).

[Dale Robinson]

For what it's worth, I set up a new twitter account to work this year's challenge. It's interesting that as soon as I set it up, I had 10 followers, all marketers. I'm not sure how they did that. It's up to thirteen now and I haven't tweeted yet.