March 2009: Getting a Handle on Twitter Haiku

Maybe half the people I "follow" or who "follow" me on twitter.com tell me they are not sure how to do it, why they are doing it and what it is all about. I wonder sometimes myself when I realize how I have committed to updating this web site, Recipe for Fatherhood, OrganicCotton.com, Facebook, LinkedIn and now Twitter.

What I've found is that Twitter is a great tool for finding information and it is an alternate channel through which some people respond more than others. Once you immerse yourself, you will find the short and pithy nature of 140 character bursts of information both concise and efficient. Here's a couple things I have figured out so far:

• You Are Who You Say You Are: Twitter is a great place to find articles, comments and thoughts by people you think are an expert on something. People might follow me because I will help them sort through the clutter of what is important in local politics as I send out interesting articles when I can. Same goes for cooking and fatherhood. I have friends who I count on for what they see as important on the film industry, what they are posting on their blog, food and other subjects.


• You Can Even Not Be Who You Say You Are: One of my favorite "tweets" is from a Twitter account with the name of cwalken. Visit the page and you will see a picture of actor Christopher Walken and a series of daily statements that will amuse, challenge and question who this person really is. I want to say the account is clearly fake but I don't know as the tweets are exactly what you would expect from Christopher Walken.


• Tiny URL is Key: Getting what you want to say into 140 characters occurs sometimes like writing haiku. Tiny URL will take a web site address and make it as much as 25 percent of it's original length. This is like money to someone who uses Twitter. Let's say you have a website you want to refer to like my friend's http://www.relationshiptrainingmanual.com/. It's a kind of a long name and if there is a folder and another file name after the dot com it almost becomes impossible to fit in a tweet. Tiny URL turns it into: http://tinyurl.com/dbrxmh. That's almost half the size of the original -- important real estate when you are writing for 140 spaces on a line.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing web-based businesses in history and cannot be ignored by anyone interested in marketing. If you are on Twitter, look me up and we can explore how to do this thing together.