Twitter Conversations

Image from Hubspot Blog

I briefly mentioned twitter conversations in my last post about twitter - finding great tweeters and I promised I would tell you more about them later, so here it is.

It seems twitter conversations (or tweet chats) are a growing phenomenon and many people on twitter don't really know about them yet so I want to start by explaining exactly what they are and how they work. If you already know about them and use them you will probably find this post quite boring, my apologies.

Why should I care?
Tweet Chats are a fantastic way to enjoy using twitter and to get the most from it and the perfect way to network with people around the world!

So what are they?
Effectively a tweet chat is like creating a public chat room on twitter, usually around a common topic of discussion. Anyone can view and join in any chat so long as they know which hashtag to look for.

How do they work?
If you've used twitter at all you will probably have seen a hashtag used at least once. A hashtag is where you place the hash symbol # in front of a word. This makes that word searchable on twitter and means other people can find your tweet if they are looking for that tag.
Example:
I make and sell jewelry, if I post about something I sell, on twitter, I can add #handmadejewelry somewhere in my tweet. Someone on twitter who is looking to buy a new piece of handmade jewelry can search for #handmadejewelry and my tweet will show up in their search even if they don't follow me and have no connection to me whatsoever.

What's that got to do with tweet chats?
Tweet chats are based around a particular hashtag and the tag is what allows everyone to see each other's posts - they are the mechanism by which the ordinary twitter interface can be turned into a chat room.
Instead of just adding vaguely relevant tags to my tweets in the hopes that someone will search for them, I use a specific tag that I know other people will also be using and looking for.

That doesn't sound like much of a conversation...
Right, but what happens for a lot of tags is that someone chooses a tag, one that isn't likely to be randomly used by anyone else. This person usually organises a fixed time, usually an hour period once a week. During that time period everyone who knows about and is interested in that subject will search for the tag and use it in their tweets to reply to what others have posted with it.
Example:

This is a screenshot (from tweetdeck) of a tweet chat I attend most weeks. It happens every Thursday from 10-11am PST.

Newest tweets are at the top so start at the bottom if you want to follow the conversation. With such a short snippet of the chat it will probably hard to follow each thread of the conversation but hopefully you can get the gist.

#omhg is the tag and it stands for 'oh my handmade goodness' (notice you can see it in every post). @ohmyhandmade (Jessika) is the person who hosts the chat.

The people who attend the chat are mostly handmade business owners, handmade business coaches or related to the handmade industry in some way.

The chat is focused around sharing the joys and woes of running a handmade business and getting and offering moral support and business tips.

Each week, Jessika will have a handmade business related topic for us to discuss and several points within that topic to keep the conversation fresh. Often there will be a guest host (usually someone experienced, with knowledge to share) who prepares the topic.

That's just one example of loads of chats out there. Pretty much anything you are interested in will have at least one chat devoted to it, the trick is just to find the right tag.








OK so how do I join in?
First you need to find out which tags are being used for these chats, that's the hardest part. Look out for tags in tweets from people you follow, especially if they use the same tag a lot during a short space of time.

Next you need to clear a space devoted to just that tag. This is optional but it's nigh on impossible to follow a chat otherwise. On Tweetdeck this is super easy, just click on the tag when you see it in someone else's tweet and tweetdeck will open a new column for you. Alternatively click to add a new column and type the tag (including the #) into the search box. It's just as easy on twitter.com, simply type the tag and # into the search box. [If you use a different app for twitter please share how best to follow a tag in the comments below.]

You don't have to follow a single member of the chat but you might discover people you want to follow.

You only need to have your search open during the time period your chat runs for but you may find that members of the chat will use the tag at other times as well, to continue chatting to one another. It all depends on the community in each chat.

To reply to people (it's often polite to introduce yourself first) all you need to do is include the hashtag in your tweet. You don't even need to @ reply to anyone. If you know of any great chats (related to handmade or jewelry or other topics in this blog) please share in the comments :)

Find Fab Blogs

Do you, like me, constantly check your blog reader throughout the day and get disappointed every time it turns up empty? Or maybe you've come across a few awesome blogs and now you're wondering how to find more?

Do you have an art/design/craft/food blog and wonder how on earth you can get more followers?


If you have a twitter account there is an easy solution to all those problems - @FabBlogBlitz. It's a new initiative by the folks at Faberuna (a great blog if you like staring at beautiful handcrafted items) to share and promote blogs.

 Every Monday from 12 noon to 1pm PST you can join in the twitter conversation by searching #FabBlogBlitz (it helps if you follow @FabBlogBlitz too). If you want everyone else to be able to see what you add to the conversation, just remember to use the hashtag #FabBlogBlitz somewhere in your tweet.

Like I said, it's a new thing so there aren't many of us there yet but @FabBlogBlitz always has several gorgeous blogs to share, I'm already following several new ones :)

At the end of the hour one of the blogs discussed is chosen to be 'blitzed' and every member of the conversation goes and leaves a comment somewhere on that blog. So it's a great way to get more people to see your blog and to make new twitter friends at the same time!


You should definitely check it out, I'll see you on Monday (oh and while you're there don't forget to follow me too: @embergrass!)

Finding Great Tweeters

Image from Under 30 CEO

You may remember a looong time ago I mentioned my struggles with Twitter and the fact that I had decided to renew my efforts to make that relationship work. I started by offering a few suggestions into how to clean out the people you follow and I promised future posts with more ideas.

Well it's been a bumpy ride and there have been several occasions when I didn't think there would ever be any more posts about Twitter as I lapsed into ignoring it again.

However, since I rebranded I have been going around all the social and crafty sites updating my username or creating new accounts. Which led me to Twitter again and since I was using a new name I decided to start completely from scratch so I could pay careful attention to the process I use to find tweeters, work out what works, and then share it with you.

1. Follow people from blogs, shops or facebook pages you already love
2. Check out people they retweet or recommend and add them if you like the look of their stream
3. Join twitter conversations about things you are interested in (more on this in another post)
4. Look out for people who post advice about running a craft business / making what you make / blogging or who generally promote work that you like or is similar to yours

Image from Twitter Tips Central

Since restarting on twitter I am a total convert - I have already gained several great opportunities just through meeting new people on twitter, not to mention 'meeting' loads of really interesting people and having some great conversations!

I'll be sharing what I've learnt in a future post or two, look out for an upcoming post about tweet chats (the best thing about twitter in my opinion) and also approaching twitter with the right mentality.

Twitter Spring Cleaning

I mentioned a while back that I had been inspired to give twitter another shot. I said I was working through steps to turn twitter into a useful resource for me and that I would be sharing them at some point. 

Well here is the first one - Spring cleaning the people you follow

It may seem harsh removing people from your twitter list but there are two important things to consider.
1. If you aren't reading their tweets because you follow too many people or have stopped looking at twitter because you really don't care what they're saying... is there any benefit for them to have you follow them anyway?
2. If you're worried that people will unfollow you if you unfollow them, don't be. If they are only following you because you're following them... do you really care if they follow you anyway?

OK now that's sorted, time to remove people!
First up - anyone who only tweets about their products; they're obviously only interested in themselves anyway
Second - people who occasionally tweet about their kids/pets/meals in an attempt to prevent you from realising that they are, in fact, exactly the same as type 1!

Those are the easy ones but I think its important not to stop there. After removing all of those people I was still left with over 200 people - still far too many to have any kind of meaningful interaction with.
So next up - people whose tweets are mostly conversations with other tweeters who you don't follow and you have no idea what is going on half the time. This may be a bad idea because people who have conversations are potentially more likely to converse with you but if you have no idea what's going on there probably isn't any point. If, on the other hand, something in their conversation strikes you as interesting maybe you should actually follow the other people too!

Finally - people who don't really have anything in common with you. Maybe people who make a completely different type of handmade product, people who are in a different age/life bracket to you. People who tweet about things that don't interest you or aren't relevant to you.
It may seem like a weird reason to remove someone but its exactly what you would do if you met these people in person. You would naturally gravitate to those with a similar outlook on life and have more to talk about with them than others. The exceptions are those who may be in a different life bracket but have also many years of experience and success in fields that interest you and tweet about it. It's not enough if their profile says they are an expert in your field but all they tweet about is their grandchildren!

Working out who to remove and who to keep takes time. I find it helps to keep tweetdeck open, whenever a tweet comes up that looks boring I check out that person's profile and compare all their other tweets. That's usually enough to decide to keep them or not.
If you follow thousands of people it might be easier to remove them all and start from scratch!

If you found this helpful look out for my next Twitter cleanup article - Finding good people to follow

Giving Twitter another go...

Anyone who sells items online will, at some point, have heard that Twitter is an amazing way to market your items for free. Chances are they've also been told that it's a complete waste of time.

As soon as I opened my handmade shop I heard about the benefits of Twitter. Until then I had never seen the point in it but I decided to give it a go, after all there is a difference beween using it for social reasons and using it for marketing purposes.

Setting up the account was easy enough, though choosing my background did take several hours! Quickly realising that tweeting with no followers was a complete waste of time I went on a mission to get followers. The obvious thing to do was to find other people tweeting about jewelry or handmade, follow them and hope they followed me back. This was surprisingly successful - there is almost an unwritten code amongst the handmade community that you follow people who follow you - and it got me over 300 followers.

So.... now I've got followers... I tweet about the stuff I make... and...people buy it?
Wrong! Everyone in the handmade community, everyone in the follow-me-and-i'll-follow-you-back mentality is purely interested in marketing themselves. Some will include the occasional tweet about their kids or their dog, an alarming number tweet about their surgeries but don't be fooled... they're only tweeting about that stuff so they look less spammy.

I got bored of Twitter very quickly. I stopped tweeting completely, the only tweets I make now are the automated tweets when I write new blog posts.

Then the other day I read this post on the Etsy forums which inspired me to give Twitter another go.

I'm slowly making the changes I need to make Twitter useful to me and meaningful for my followers. Look out for future posts explaining the steps I'm taking to do that, starting with spring cleaning my list of people I follow.

How do you find Twitter? Have you found a good community of people who are interested in what you tweet? Do you just spam your items all day? Does that work for you? Did you give up on Twitter like I did? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it and maybe incorporate some of your ideas into my cleanup process :)