As some of you know, Catalyst West Coast conference happened during last month. Some of you were probably there, which makes me happy. I was there and enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to hear many of the speakers, but it was great to meet people from all over the world and make new friends.
While I was at the conference, I decided to do a little experiment with Twitter. Since I’m sort of still a “newbie” at this tweeting stuff, I thought I’d see if I could learn something from it and connect with people at the conference.
I tried to tweet consistently using #catwest. I’m still not exactly sure how hashtag directories work…that can be the topic of another blog. Anyway, so, I tweeted and tweeted and people started following. Amazing!
Lesson #1: Tweeting consistently helps build your list of followers.
Because faithHighway was a sponsor of Catalyst West, I was able to let my followers know where to come say hi. This turned out to be kind of interesting…One of my followers walked by our booth, then sent me a tweet telling me he had just passed our booth and that I looked busy. Not sure how I felt about that…he, however, came back later, and we exchanged a few short verbal phrases (all under 140 characters, mind you).
Lesson #2: When one tweets a lot, it’s inevitable that you start speaking in Twitterish.
My goal wasn’t really to rack up followers. I just wanted to connect to a few people, and then see if I could actually meet them. I ended up meeting several of my new followers — some in stranger ways than others. One morning, before heading to the conference for the day, I went to Starbucks. Upon entering the store, I heard someone shout out my name from the opposite side of the store. I wasn’t sure he was calling me, or someone else with my same name, so I played dumb and looked at the menu. Latte or iced coffee? Then I heard it again, “LAURA! Are you Laura Burrus?!” Ok, so now, I was certain that he was calling me from across the store. For a moment I felt famous. I gave him a puzzled, “Yes?” And with one twitterish response, he said, “Twitter!” And then it clicked.
Lesson #3: Your followers recognize you because of your many tweets, not because you’re famous.
All in all, it was a good experience. And because of it, I now know that:
@MikeKell is frustrated because the swine flu is taking over the news.
@ScottMcclellan is putting together a list of 90’s Christian punk/rock bands
@Cameron987 is having a baby
@olykelly loves her interns
@KyleZimmerman finally made it back to the OC
Thank you, Twitter.
pic by Sister72
May 5th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Very cool, Laura. Lesson #2 in "Twitterish" is quite funny.
The thing with hash tags is they are not a "directory" but a tag. What's the difference? Think of a phone directory: It is compiled by a central source that decides what to list. Or a folder on your computer (aka "directory): You probably organize some documents by topic, by placing them in a folder. In that case, you are the central organizing source.
A tag is different from a directory in that it is not necessarily controlled by a central source. Consider: Person A defines a new tag "Foo." Person B posts something. Person C says, "That's cool, I'm going to mark that as a Foo." The organizing power is not centralized, but distributed; it's the "hive mind" at work. (Because of the nature of Twitter, person B and person C happen to be the same.)
Clear as mud? I suspect that you already use tags in other contexts, such as managing your photos. They might be called "keywords" instead of "tags."
May 5th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Great post, Laura. I was also at #catwest and one of my highlights was getting to meet folks I've followed / who follow me on Twitter. It really did feel like a reunion.
Thanks for your words. Yay twevangelists! (term I heard from @danatwichell).
Dawn Carter
@decart
May 6th, 2009 at 2:57 am
@jonreid- Thanks for the explanation of hash tags. That made sense and I will stop looking for a directory to find them in.
(ok, that was a joke…) But really, thanks for the explanation. It made perfect sense and now I get it! YAY!
@decart- Yes #catwest was a great place to connect with Tweeters. I kept looking around and everyone was on their phone..not that everyone was tweeting…but I assume many of them were. Who was your favorite speaker and why…if you can pick just one?