Beyond Pretty Things
  • Idea
  • Curator
  • Contact
About
  • Vincent Hunt
  • Vincent Hunt
  • American Post-Industrial Entrepreneur. Advisor to Revolutionaries. Founder & CEO at MASSIVE Corporation. Co-founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Kind, The Hospitality Intelligence Company™.

    Voices

    “When trying to describe Vincent Hunt, I find myself lost in a search of words. His creative mind set performs at a capacity well beyond anyone that I have ever worked with or better yet, even met. Josh Boutwell, Marketing Manager FOX 31 WFXL-TV (joshboutwell.com)

    "Vincent is amazing; with incredible talent and creativity..." ~ John Lusher, Digital & Social Media Consultant (johnlusher.com)

TwitterFacebookPlurkFriendfeedLinkedInTumblr
Subscribe via RSS »
  • Edit
  • Delete
  • Tags
  • Autopost

Twitter Streams Should NOT Look Like RSS Feeds. Nope.

Often I get the question from colleagues, and clients... "How do I take my Twitter activity to the next level??" AND right out the gate I want to ask them - "What is the next level of Twitter??" AND the second question that I have for them (that I tend to keep to myself) is... "What level are you at now??" And to avoid making the entire scenraio more complicated than it could already be, I simply give them one word of advice...

Answer the impeding question that Twitter so elegantly ask you as soon as you log onto the site.. "What are you doing?"

While this sounds easy enough, I have undoubtedly found that this question is much harder to answer than it appears on the surface. I come to this conclusion because though it IS the question asked, it's seldom (VERY SELDOM) the question answered. AND if it IS answered, it's answered in a way that is not really believeable. Heck - I AM EVEN GUILTY of not answering this question on Twitter. In fact, IF I am honest, I never really answer this question AT ALL. However; this is not what I want to talk about in this post, I just wanted to lay down a foundational idea that we could spring from...

Twitter Streams Should NOT Look Like RSS Feeds. Nope.

From time to time look at some of the Twitter Streams that are really gaining some momentum and what I find, absolutely counter trends the idea of the "conversation stream" that Twitter bolsters, is in-fact - the "one-way communication" approach that tends to negate the idea of conversation yet prevails in over 70% (or MORE) of the streams that I note. News organizations are NOTORIOUS for this. Here is an example...

Q. What are you doing?

A. Man shot on the far east side of town - http://manshotonfareastside.com

Huh? So... What you are doing is... Ummm... What? You are doing the man shot on the far east side of town...? I would think not, BUT this is generally the way broadcast and news identites have leveraged Twitter, for the most part. NOW it would not be fair for me to give this example of poor Twitter execution without giving the example of good execution... So here you go...OR my best shot at it...

Q. What are you doing?

A. Sharing a story about a man who was shot on the far east side of town, would love feedback!! http://bt.ly.com/45xl

The difference is obvious, however; there are subtle things added to the conersation that transforms the Tweet from a broadcast to a conversation or a broadshare (broadsharing... totally different idea that we will deal with later). Here are the differences...

1. The tweet was written in context to the original question... What are you doing? Answer: Sharing

2. A call to action OR a request to engage was injected... "... would love your feedback"

3. A short URL was injected to insure "retweeting" or spreading ...

The problem that faces almost every "Tweeter" that I have ever shared ideas with, is they have a hard time tweeting in an open ended way. Answer the question (what are you doing?), invite conversation, insure ease of idea spreading (short url's, shorter tweets, ect.). At the end of the day... The goal is to make sure that your Twitter stream does not look like an RSS feed. RSS feeds are generally one way communications, and have no window for engagement - and righfully so.

Ideas

1. News Stations/Broadcasting Identities - Do not do away with continual news updates, simply add some engagement. ANSWER the question from time to time.

2. Businesses - ANSWER the question. Tell us that you are starting an program that raises money for building sustainable housing in thrird world countries... AND ask us what we think about it...

3. Individuals - ANSWER the question - What are YOU doing... You could be thinking about something, OR looking at something that I wanty to see or engage in a conversation with you about...

BUT in all of this... Try to resist the idea of your Twitter stream being an RSS feed.

 

Tagged Social Media Design
  • 0 responses
  • Like
  • Comment
Meta
  • Posted at 6:38 am on Tue, Aug 18, 2009
  • Views (
    )
    Permalink (∞)
Share
  • Short URL
  • Tweet
Companies & Projects
  • MASSIVE
  • Kind
  • Kind on Twitter
  • Hospitality Intelligence
  • Menulus
  • Menulus on Twitter
  • Kindness Matters
  • Canvas & Lead
  • Behance
  • Headline by Airspace Workshop for Posterous
  • TwitterFacebookPlurkFriendfeedLinkedInTumblr262887 site views
​