Here’s a little bit of a rant, for which I apologize in advance.
I find the theme about Twitter being all about what people eat for lunch totally irritating at this point. Yes, maybe two years ago people would write about every little thing they did, including eating lunch. But Twitter has evolved far beyond that now – and if some of us by some bizarre twist of fate are still only reading those kinds of tweets, then clearly we are not following the right people.
My response to the listserve discussion about Twitter referenced by Jamie’s post above was this:
This is an interesting conversation. Part of my work as a social media strategist is to help associations figure out how to use Twitter, but I decided long ago that it was not part of that job to convince anyone to use it. So my take would simply be that with 6 million people on Twitter in the US alone (see http://www.quantcast.com/twitter.com), and with Twitter’s demographics showing 79% of users are between the ages of 18 and 49 and 63% college-educated, (http://www.quantcast.com/twitter.com#demographics), the chances are at just about 100% that some of your association’s members are on Twitter.
It is a communications channel which enables word of mouth about your organization, but only you can decide if you have 1) something to talk about and 2) enough of your stakeholders there to do the talking.
Here’s a starter list of association professionals on Twitter – (If you use Twitter and aren’t here, add yourself and your association.) You can always contact anyone on this list and see how they use it for their organization.
Here’s a screenshot of my Twitter screen right at this moment. (I only have a mini-laptop, so I’ll just show you the number of tweets that I’m seeing on screen right now, lest you think I am craftily hiding all the lunch posts. And yes, I follow people all over the world, so just because it’s late afternoon here does not mean it’s not lunchtime somewhere else right now).
So lookee here. We have:
- a message from Pepco, reminding people they don’t tweet over the weekend and how to reach them. That’s pretty cool I think.
- someone speaking at a conference and inviting us to have a look
- someone giving kudos to someone else who apparently helped them via Twitter (reading between the lines)
- someone giving info about weekend activities
- someone tweeting the Government 2.0 conference
- someone discussing marketing and inviting us to check it out.
Obviously this is only one snapshot – I could very easily bore you with a whole bunch more, but I’ll refrain. But what do you notice? 0 for 6 on what anyone had for lunch. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m not saying people don’t tweet mundane things about their lives. I personally just tweeted that I had a splitting headache – not particularly useful info for anyone. But perhaps that explains why I feel like ranting about something right about now.
Here’s how I experience Twitter – Twitip summed it up perfectly as the 90-10 rule for successful Twitter networking.
“90% of what you share on Twitter should be made up of personal insights and thoughts along with a heavy dose of helpful links, while 10% should be made up of messages that more directly benefit you.”
This is advice, but it’s not a hard and fast rule. It’s also, in my opinion, a naturally developing parameter for how most of us actually do use Twitter, even if we’ve never heard of this rule. Of course there are days when the percentages won’t be 90-10. Of course there are people who consciously don’t follow this at all. But generally speaking, as professionals who use Twitter for work and play, this rule does work. And so what does that mean? It means for every “I have a headache” or “Chicken KaPow for lunch at Thai Tanic” or “Must go to bed now”, there are many, many more useful tweets, with links to interesting sites, or links to blog posts, or general discussion about specific issues, or conference tweets, or news, or citizen journalism, or whatever.
Do or do not, says Yoda – just quit bitching about it.
That’s all, I feel better now, thanks! Have a great weekend! 
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8 responses to "Twitter is not about what we had for lunch. Get over it."
{ 8 comments }
I like the 90/10 rule, and I don’t think I’m abiding by that now. I use Tweetdeck since I follow so many and just recently trimmed down my groups so I’m not spending as much time on twitter. My twitter use is purely personal/professional, for me only, not on behalf of any organization. I find that I’m not reading my RSS feed as much and I miss that. If I can find some balance, I’ll have more to share with others, and that’s my goal. Thanks for expressing what I’m sure many of us are feeling about those naysayers.
so happy to be part of the party.
Phew… I’m glad I didn’t do that tweet about 75 proof Cherry Brandy being the secret ingredient to tonight’s rack of BBQ ribs! Though I do think that would be beneficial to others. They were really good…
Besides, I think you’re pretty spot on with this.
Good advice
Nice rant, Maddie. Thanks for moving us forward on this.
Last week I had to sit through a horrible presentation on internet safety at our high school – horrible because of the misinformation and the diatribe against social media including twitter – I’m sending this post to the speaker – thanks!
Great post, Maddie! I don’t know what my ratio is, but I make a conscious effort to share insights, cool web links that might entertain or enlighten and sprinkle that with personal status updates. There’s a person behind my avatar and since I think it’s cool when I see that Guy Kawasaki is on his way to play hockey, I follow suit (not the hockey, of course…well, you get it..okay, I’ll stop now.) Cheers!
And yet, in the end, we are what we (tw)eat!
AWESOME post and amen! Why is it that, as much as people complain about Twitter, everyone’s there? Also–and I just blogged about this last night–why does everyone act like they don’t care about what people had for lunch or other personal details? Hello–isn’t the fact that there are a million and one reality shows on TV proof that people actually do care a LOT about the stupid little details of people’s lives? Why else do people watch The Real World or any of the other shows that are all about watching people do stuff like root through the refrigerator or sitting around and do nothing? Apparently knowing every little detail of people’s lives is actually very interesting to people because otherwise there wouldn’t be new reality shows cropping up every season. And not just celebrity ones–the more mundane the better, it seems–based on the popularity of shows like Ruby or Jon and Kate plus 8.
I bet you a million dollars that Twitter is going to start becoming part of reality shows–so instead of having to wait a whole week to see what the people are up to you can follow them on Twitter. Actually, I’m sure some already have done it.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent–this is a great post!
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