My View on Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

I heard about Twitter from few friends of mine who could not stop raving about it. After initial skepticism about how useful it would be, I joined the bandwagon and started twittering (Micro blogging on Twitter is called Twittering). I post about 1 tweet (post) per day on Twitter. There are some people who tweet all day long (I’m not sure if they do anything else).

From my experience so far I can tell you that it is a pretty good tool to learn things you normally would miss, things that you care about.

There are a number of people in the Web Analytics, Online Marketing and Advertising space that I follow and I’m always adding more people to follow. Following someone can provide you insight into what they are up to, what are the cool things they read or have come across, and what business challenges they are facing and trying to resolve. You can even learn how they solve these business issues.

Occasionally you will see people who tweet about their daily life. Their tweets looks like “I am sipping a cup of Starbucks mocha”, “I am walking into my apartment”, etc. But if you ignore such noise (unless you find it informative) you will find lots of useful information too.

Personally, here is how I have used Twitter so far:

1. Find new articles/blog posts : There are so many articles published every day and it is hard to keep track of everything. However, people I follow on Twitter bring that information directly to me via their tweets


2. Ideas for Blog Posts: Other people’s tweets have provided me with ideas for my own blog


3. Get Answers: I have asked questions and have gotten answers from people who follow me on twitter


4. Find new people to follow: I have found new thought leaders to follow, which in turn helps me with number 1 and 2

What does it mean to follow someone on Twitter?
Following: Following someone simply means receiving their Twitter updates.
Followers: Your followers are those who have elected to receive your tweets.

Someone mentioned awhile back about how to measure the success of your twittering. In his opinion the KPI for measuring the success of twittering is the number of followers/number of people you follow. The higher this number, the higher your success is on Twitter. What he was basically saying is that you should write great stuff so that people want to follow you but you should not follow anyone else because your KPI will drop. I don’t agree with this point of view, in my opinion, the KPIs for twittering success are :

1. The increase in number of followers


2. Number of Re-tweets/Tweet. Re-tweet is when someone takes your tweet and tweets it again so that his/her followers can read it too


3. New things you learn (hard to quantify but you know when you learn something new)

Other KPIs could be

1. Increase in your brand awareness (both personal and corporate)


2. Increase in any site side conversion (you will be driving users to your site/blogs etc.)

Who should you follow?

It really depends on your interest. I started with few people in the web analytics field and my coworkers. Now, I also look at the original tweeters of the re-teewts that come my way and if the person meets my interests, I start following them. I also follow people who are following me if they tweet about the stuff that interests me.

If at any point you don’t like what a person is tweeting about then you can just stop following them, it take one click to stop following them.

Here are some Web Analytics and Online Marketers that you might start following:

• Aaron Gray


• Alec Cochrane


• Alex Brasil


• Alex Cohen


• Adam Nenning


• Alan McGee


• Alistair Croll


• Andy Wang


• Angie Brown


• Anil Batra (me)


• Anil Umachigi


• Anjan Haalder


• Avinash Kaushik


• Bill Bruno


• Birger Friedrichs


• Bob Page


• Brad Bernstein-Reppen


• Brent Hieggelke


• Brian Au


• Brian Hawkins


• Bryan Cristina


• Bryan Eisenberg


• Chad Hollingsworth


• Chris Clapham


• Chris Grant


• Clint Ivy


• ComMetrics


• Connie Bensen


• Cortney Sellers


• Daniel Shields


• Dash Lavine


• Dave Barber



• Dean Burris


• Dennis Mortensen


• Doug Stewart


• Dustin Woodard


• Dylan Lewis


• Eric Hansen


• Eric T. Peterson


• Feroz Khan


• Fred Kuu


• Freddie Blicher


• Gahlord Dewald


• Greg Dowling


• Guliz Sicotte


• Ian Thomas


• Iya Chernyshova


• Jacques Warren


• Jason Egan


• Jason Wudip


• Jay Allen


• Jeff Jordan


• Jeff Leong


• Jennifer Day


• Jim Cain


• Jim Sterne


• Joanna Teo


• Jodi McDermott


• John Cole


• Judah Phillips


• Julie (jb) Booth


• Julien Coquet


• June Dershewitz


• Justin Metzl


• Kevin Rogers


• Kissmetrics


• Maigari Jinkiri


• Marshall Sponder


• Matthew Niederbergers


• Michael Feiner


• Michael Helbling


• Michael Summar


• Moritz Haberman


• Neil Minetto


• Nicole Rawski


• Oliver Schiffers


• Omniture


• Paul Smith


• Paul Trumble


• Paul Wille


• Peter Sanborn


• Rohan Kapoor


• Rich Page


• Ridder Manzanet
  
• Sean Carlos


• Sean Power


• Shannon Yelland


• Siegert Dierickx
  
• Stephane Hamel


• Steve Eisenberg


• Sunitha


• Terry Chadwick


• Thom Rogers


• Thomas Bosilevac


• Tim Leighton-Boyce


• Tim Wilson


• WDave Rhee


• Web Trends


• Zubin Kutar


• Zunaid Khan

I got this list from the Web Analytics Yahoo Group. Please let me know if I missed your name. If you would like your name to be added to this list then please leave your name and twitter username as a comment and I will update this list.

If you are already on Twitter I would like to hear your opinion about twitter. Do you think it has helped you personally or in business or is it a distraction?

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Site: AnilBatra.com
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