In one of my previous posts, I talked about how networking is changing since social media came along.
One of my favorite new social media sites is Twitter, I love it love it love it! And it's great for networking- if you understand the culture, that is.
If you're new to social media, you will soon find that each community has its own etiquette, customs, and rules, and Twitter is no different.
The past month or so has been really interesting, learning about hashtags, functionality, fail whales (left) and what people talk about (pretty much everything).
Twitter is this community in which personal and professional selves meld- people discussing their industries, what's for dinner, tech news and links to lol cats (I http://useqwitter.
com, it also tells you what you posted just before the person stopped following).
It turns out that there are a lot of Twittermongers out there who will follow you so that you follow them.
Then, they "unfollow" you, hoping you won't notice, thereby inflating the number of followers they have.
This is completely lame and defeats the purpose of the site- being social and interacting.
If they aren't following you, they probably won't know that you're even replying to their posts unless they use a service like Tweetbeep...
which means they probably won't reply back to you either.
By the way, Tweetbeep is like Google Alerts for Twitter.
Check it out at http://www.
tweetbeep.
com).
So, my first lesson on Twitter is: don't be so excited to follow someone who doesn't want to follow you back.
If it is someone you're a fan of, or a news site that's one thing.
But I'm always weary of those who have little or no interest in interacting with others on any social media site.
Peace.
@jenn_ex