Meryl's Notes Blog

When people say they don’t get Twitter — it’s because they need to be more proactive. Twitter doesn’t work if you lurk, post updates, and do nothing else.

What I’ve learned after using Twitter for a month:

1. Follow unto others as you would have them do unto you.
2. @comment others to make the most of the experience.
3. Link to your stuff — smartly. Frequently linking to your stuff leads to unfollows. Besides, it defeats tweet purpose.
4. Don’t take non-responses personally. Conversations fly on Twitter, so people might miss it or simply receive too many @replies to respond to every single one.
5. Be patient in getting the hang of Twitter. Twitter’s help is helpless and it has a few quirks for a simple app.
6. Avoid addiction by taking care in using addicting apps like Twhirl and other cool Twittapps or else Twitter will suck you in for more time than you can afford. I curb addiction by checking in twice a day (start and end of day) and no in-between (except weekends).
7. Use your name or else people won’t know who you are. I started with Content Maven and no face photo. Hey, I didn’t know better at the time.

Does Twitter help your business? Well, I haven’t landed clients or talked much shop through Twitter. But Twitter helps freelancers and solo enterpreneurs feel like we have a little office environment, which produces noise that makes you feel like you’ve got co-workers nearby.

Twitter also offers a nice way to connect with friends and colleagues while meeting new folks. I’ve asked and answered personal and professional questions, which can be valuable or simply fun. I asked a question about examples of good online help and one person responded not to use Twitter’s as an example of how to do it. The irony.