Who are you talking to? [Twitter]

My friend of 7 years has just recently branched into the world of twitter and though she is pretty tech savvy, twitter can be overwhelming, especially if you are following any power user types. Today and for the next few days I am at a huge interactive conference – SXSW (South by Southwest) also known as #sxsw.

I just left a very interesting panel run by Jesse Pickard – “Why Gen Y Won’t Friend Your Brand”. At the beginning of the discussion we established a hashtag in the room – #geny. So during Jesse’s presentation the people in the (very crowded) room were able to communicate back and forth – ask questions, provide insight and expand upon the discussion all via twitter.

Twitter’s hashtags are a great way to target discussions. But they also have a downfall – the rest of your twitter stream can find themselves thinking “who is she talking to?”. The way I generally handle this is I reach out to my “other” audience before I’m going to jump into a hashtag discussion. For example on Thursday evenings there is a Design Community Twitter Hours (@DCTH) where graphic/web designers chat about design nerd stuff. So before I start posting a bunch of design links and answering questions about typography, etc I send out a generic twitter message that says “feel free to ignore me for the next 2 hours.”

I decided to provide this brief intro to twitter because of this dm:
who are you talking to

Any other advice you’d add about how to keep from excluding 90% of your followers when you go off on a tangent?

6 thoughts on “Who are you talking to? [Twitter]

  1. Yes, I do consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to technology. When things are new (like when IM was new), I need someone to explain the basics. After that, I’m good-to-go! Thanks for the explanation. I get it now!!

  2. Although I have a twitter account and think it’s somewhat amusing, I really don’t understand the appeal of it. I will say that I think the best way to inform your followers that you’re going to be engaging in a discussion or something similar is to just say, “I’m going to be posting on a twitter discussion for the next two hours” or something like that so they know what’s going on. Have fun in South by Southwest! I hope you enjoy my town. :)

  3. I would say that if you find your hashtag discussion has been going on a bit longer than intended, consider direct messaging to get e-mail addresses, or find a common forum.

  4. twitter is..overwhelming. Up until now I don’t see any big benefits or anything with having that. Get connected? Get friends? I dont know. I wish someone would teach me twitter properly.

  5. I found it helped to increase my twitter usage very gradually. I know a lot of people, myself included, signed up and promptly forgot about it, only to try it again months later. By switching to higher-usage tweeters as I got more comfortable with how things worked, I managed to avoid getting too overwhelmed.

    However, I did go a little crazy when everyone was talking about #sxsw ;) Sorry!

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