Word of mouth on speed

'Word of mouth on speed' is how Brisbane ABC radio announcer Spencer Jolly described Twitter at today's Twitter Event put on by Interactive Minds

This was a great gathering with loads of interesting speakers who demonstrated the wide range of applications of twitter both in a social and business context.

If you have no idea about twitter, think of it as a cocktail party where you meet people briefly and ask and answer questions.

Five things I learnt
  1. Guide for good tweeting - the 70/20/10 rule - 70% sharing, 20% connecting and corresponding, 10% chit chat
  2. Twitter experienced a huge growth curve in January/February 2009 post Oprah.
  3. Standard taxonomy in tweets is important so people can find topics of interest
  4. Some people can limit their twitter conversations to just a few minutes a day (wish I was one of them) and twitter can be addictive - duh!
  5. Should your business be on twitter? The conversation is happening whether you are there or not. Better to be part of it and manage any adverse reactions.

Tools I am going to investigate (advance apologies if some of the names are not correct but just use Google)
  • Tweetlater - tool to schedule tweets ahead of time
  • Twitterfon - app for iphone
  • amap.to - new twitter map service with links that work better and more opportunity to personalise
  • Followwatch - tool for checking who is following and unfollowing you
  • Twhirl - helps manage different twitter accounts
  • Tweetreach - measures twitter success
"Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time" by Joel Comm got a great review including the 30 day plan for world domination.

Based on today's event which was well organised, informative, timely, compact and even included coffee and cake, I'm planning to attend some more Interactive Mind events.