Kristian Kalsing

Twitter is one the fastest growing social tools on the web and I am personally a huge fan, so I thought I would take the opportunity to share why I think Twitter rocks and how you can get started with Twitter. I have grown professionally by using Twitter and here I will give you a few simple steps to get started.

Twitter is essentially a public short messaging (micro-blogging) system that allows users to publish updates (tweets) and to follow other users’ updates. Every update has to be in 140 characters or less. It’s probably one of the simplest websites out there, yet the use of it can be very advanced.

So, what do I use it for? Well, first of all, I don’t really tweet much about what I’m doing on the weekend or trivialities such as what I eat for lunch. I’ve got Facebook for that sort of friend-to-friend type chit-chat. I use Twitter as an important tool in my profession as a Solutions Architect and I believe any professional can potentially extract a lot of value from Twitter.

My professional area of expertise is around designing and architecting technology solutions for enterprises to solve problems in collaboration, content management and information access. There are many other people around the world working in the same area and through Twitter I can connect and collaborate with those people. The basic idea is that if we all share our knowledge, we can all grow collectively. On Twitter we can ask questions, help others and share news of interest. It becomes a professional grapevine and you can compare it to the casual conversations happening in your open-plan office environment but you are potentially engaging with the global experts in your field.

Apart from using Twitter as a work tool, I also found it very useful for travel research when I went to India a few months back. If it sounds like something you can benefit from as well, then here are my tips for getting started with Twitter:

1. Assume nothing. It takes a while to really understand how you get value from it. Go into it with an open mind and spend some time trying to understand how it all works.
2. Sign up. Using your real name is a great opportunity to take control of your personal brand, but we will save that discussion for another blog post. Use an alias if you’re not comfortable with using your own name.
3. Find interesting people to follow. Start with about 20-40. Use Twitter Search to search for tweets in your areas of interest and then follow the people with tweets you find interesting. It’s very easy to stop following people, so don’t hesitate to follow people for a while just to check them out.
4. Tweet. Share interesting thoughts, let people know what you’re working on or ask questions. If you went to an event with lots of people in your profession, what would you talk about?
5. Engage with people. If you start a message with @user_name it will be directed at that user (e.g. “@kalsing Hmm… I don’t know about this Twitter thing”). Respond to questions, ask questions, comment on thoughts, etc.
6. Don’t think you have to read all tweets. The more people you follow, the more tweets you get in your timeline. But don’t feel you necessarily have to read all those tweets. It’s like your office chit-chat, if you’re not there it doesn’t really matter. However, the fact that you do participate regularly means that you know what’s going on and you have an opportunity to share experiences.
7. Install a Twitter application. The Twitter website is too basic for the advanced uses of Twitter. If you are running Windows I recommend you start with Twhirl and move onto TweetDeck once you’re hooked. But there are many other Twitter applications available.

Follow the steps above and give it a chance for a couple of weeks. Then ask me for more tips because one of the most fascinating aspects of Twitter is the amount of applications and tools built on top of the Twitter platform. Thanks for reading and I look forward to connecting with you on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Summary of TIME’s cover story about Twitter
2. Off to India, travelling 2.0

Kristian Kalsing Life 2.0, Work 2.0