Micro Blogging

About Twitter

• Twitter is one service that is used for micro blogging.
• Tweet's are 140 character updates
• Never use twitter to spam people
• Twitter brings "traffic"
• It's a way to add personality

The best rule to follow is if it's something that your followers will like. If it's useful to them, the more likely they'll pay attention to your tweets. It's like building trust, if they know that you give them valuable URL's in your tweets, they won't hesitate to check them out, but give them junk and they'll unfollow you in a heartbeat.

The best rule to use on twitter is to just have fun, give your updates, participate in conversations that interest you, give useful recommendations and just be yourself. You'll notice a surge in how many people follow you and in turn build credibility and trust, making it easier for you in the long run.

Future Application

You will be using Twitter to share creative events that are happening in your life and how it relates to your career area. At least every other link, you will need to insert a link into the tweet that relates. When you insert a link into twitter, go to www.bit.ly and paste the link into the big box underneath "Shorten with bit.ly" and click "Shorten." Make sure you sign up for a free account first and login.

Need to Know

When you tweet you do not need to:

• do not use complete sentences
• do not capitalize the first word
• do not use "and" -- use &

You do need to try to:

• keep it as short as possible
• cut out excess words (e.g. "I read" -- just "read")
• if you refer to someone else, try to use their Twitter name @username (@billbiz)
• use a hash (#) for key words (e.g. exited about #marketing the upcoming student council event)

I read and was inspired by the Iranian government's effort to improve its biomed research centers: http://bit.ly/bv44Z8