Twitter World – Face Your Fears and Play the Game

“We must learn to view change as a natural phenomenon – to anticipate it and to plan for it. The future is ours to channel in the direction we want to go… we must continually ask ourselves, 'What will happen if…?' or better still, 'How can we make it happen?' ” – Lisa Taylor.

Twitter.

After several attempts, some confusion, some boredom and some resistance to change – I have finally embraced Twitter and am surprised to find that I am not the only one from these parts to have resisted the lure of the tweet.

BUT my life has changed for the better, for the lovely world of Twitter is even finer than the fantasy land of dreams created by Pinterest, especially for information junkies such as my own self.

For in the Twitter Zone, I can easily scan through series of posts on topics that are important to me to easily digest bits of information (often information I would not have googled for – but which is, actually, amazing AND incredible), pass it on (the retweet), comment on it and/or add it to my favorites.

Missing pet

'She means the world to our family': Woman seeks help in finding missing pet parrot

9h ago

BE CAREFUL ON THE ROADS

Semi flips outside P.A.; one of dozens of incidents on Sask. roads due to winter weather

9h ago

NO GO FOR BUSES

School bus routes outside P.A. canceled due to spring snowstorm

15h ago

As Community Affairs Editor for paNOW.com, I am – really – a blogger for YOU. I blog your community news items to our website all day, every day. Now, I tweet them as well.

So far, that is not incredible. Unlike some with thousands or millions of followers – I am only at 31 today. But that’s what makes Twitter fun. It is not just information sharing – nor does it have to be endless items of nonsense. Twitter is, in fact, a huge game.
For those of you who are not YET in the know … a follower is like a Facebook Friend, except you don’t ask anyone to be your friend. People find you through various Twitter methods and you can decide if you want them to follow you or not. You can also decide if you will follow them.

Twitter is much different from Facebook in that it is short bits of information: some that are thoughts – expressed; some are links to larger articles. Twitter is not really intimate or personal. People you “follow” are not necessarily “followed” by your “followers” so you can retweet. Again – I refer to Facebook when I say a retweet is like a Facebook “share”.
But, I am spoiling the fun.

So I am here today to say that despite my earlier protestations … Twitter is not only easy to get onto, but it can be good for you.
For anyone trying to get the word out about anything … it can be critical. For those hoping to excel in a certain field – and knowledge is, indeed power, Twitter can provide you with as much or as little information as you need to not only keep you current – but keep you at the top of your game.

Here’s what you do:
1. Make a Twitter Account:
2. Go to The Twitter homepage and scroll all the way to the bottom. Click on the “Get Started” button.
3. Create a username and password. Twitter will automatically check the availability of your username. Once you find one that is unique, enter your email address and continue.
4. Now you want to find someone in the Twitter World to follow and to follow you. So, you can see if any of your e-mail contacts are on Twitter. Just enter your e-mail username and password, and twitter will automatically import anyone it recognizes.
5. Use the # (Discover) option. This opens up Subjects you may be interested in. For example, I am interested in receiving tweets about local news, marketing, food, “green” stuff. Via the Discover option, I was able to go into those areas of my interest and find people that are tweeting the kind of information I actually want. Or you can use the search feature. For example, I wanted, of course, to follow paNOW. I searched and boom @princealbertnow. There you can follow any number of paNOW people, like myself @karenspanow.
6. You can find more things to follow and more followers by using a hashtag. I know this sounds edgy and rebellious but it is really just putting a # sign beside a topic. That will lead people to the phrase you just tweeted. For example if you put #KarenCay – you may lead others to find me if they read your tweet. The same applies with the @. If you include an @princealbertnow, you will lead your readers to paNOW.com’s Twitter page.

7. Set up your phone. The big advantage of Twitter is that you can update via text messages from your phone. Go to the “Devices” tab on your profile page and then enter your cell phone number. A confirmation message will be sent to your phone, and then you'll be able to make your first update.

It takes about 5 minutes.

Then there are the rules of the game. This is more about etiquette and fair play but like Monopoly, Clue or any other board game – there are rules that make it fun.
These are rules I found from I guy I am following … Jeff Goins @JeffGoins. If you are on Twitter, you can just follow him. For those of you who are not …

Twitter manners 101
· Be gracious.
· Be social. Twitter is about conversation, not monologue.
· Say “thank you” (a lot).
· Use the @ reply to publicly thank someone.
· Don’t just follow people; engage them.
· Have a sense of humor.
· Refrain from flaming. Use your words to encourage and lift up rather than to tear down. Never underestimate the power of a tweet.
· Don’t follow someone expecting him to follow you back. Follow because you’re interested in what the person has to say. (Conversely, and somewhat ironically, if someone does follow you, it’s courteous to follow back.)
· Be informal. Have fun. Don’t treat it as a chore.
· Don’t hound influential people, begging them to read your blog or retweet you. Win their trust and influence by being remarkable and serving them first. My best strategy for networking is serving others.
· Hold back the urge to tweet too much (more than 20 times per day). If you have a lot of ideas, use a program like Hootsuite or Cotweet to schedule your tweets so that they can be spaced out.
· Listen to your followers.
· Show interest in others, before asking them to care about you (or what you do).
· Ask questions.
· Don’t be afraid to ask for a retweet when it’s really important. (This is best utilized when it’s to help out someone else.)
· Tell the truth.
· Don’t tweet in the third person (Jeff hates it when you do that — it’s so Facebook circa 2008).
· Don’t retweet people who retweet you, unless you’re responding and quoting them. e.g. “RT @JeffGoins are you crazy?! // You bet.”
· Promote other people’s stuff (blog posts, photos, websites, etc.)
· Talk about other people more than you do about yourself. A good rule of thumb is the 20:1 ratio.

So, there you have it.

Get on the Twitter bandwagon and join in on the fun and learn a tonne of stuff.

@karenspanow @princealbertnow .