I’ve finally ventured into the microblogging service Twitter, four years after it started.
My main hesitation has been that it looks like it could easily be a time sink. I know myself; I know that there are times I’ll give in to distraction rather than do things I actually need to do to achieve my goals, and it’s easier just to remove the temptation.
What I’ve done, though, is set up my Twitter account in such a way that it won’t distract me, because it’s all behind the scenes. Let me explain.
I’m not planning to be actually “on” Twitter. I’m not going to be following anyone (so if you follow me and I don’t follow you back, it’s not personal; that’s how it will be with everyone). And I will rarely be tweeting anything directly. Instead, I’ve set up my Twitter feed to be a convenient aggregation, for other people who do use Twitter, of several different things I do.
Firstly, I often bookmark things in the Delicious social bookmarking site, and many of those things would be of interest to the people on my mailing list or who follow my blog. At the same time, I don’t have time to blog about all of them, and, since my blog feeds directly into the mailing list, I don’t want to fill people’s inboxes with too much stuff.
Delicious have a feature that makes it easy to tweet new bookmarks, so I’ve set that up. Now when I bookmark something about health or personal development, I’ll take a couple of extra clicks to send it into my Twitter stream.
Another source of tweets will be my Facebook page for Hypno NZ. I mostly use my Facebook account to stay in touch with friends and family (so if I don’t know you and you send a friend request, I’m likely to ignore it), but for things that are likely to be of interest to my subscribers but are too short to bother with an email to the list or a blog post, I’ll put them on the Hypno NZ page. If you’re on Facebook and become a fan of Hypno NZ, all the status updates there will flow into your update feed.
I’m also feeding my blog posts into both the Hypno NZ Facebook page and Twitter (using Twitterfeed), and to my LinkedIn profile (which I’ve also linked to my Twitter account, so I can do status updates in either LinkedIn or Twitter and have them appear in the other if I choose).
I’ve linked my YouTube account and my Goodreads account to Twitter as well (hey, I’m in the top 50 reviewers on Goodreads for New Zealand, I did not know that). Because I read a lot of genre fiction as well as nonfiction, not all of the reviews that come through from Goodreads are necessarily going to be of interest to the people who follow me, but it’s all or nothing with that particular connection.
Finally, when I send emails out to my list, I can choose to tweet them as well from within MailChimp.
So, if you choose to follow me (@MRMHypno) on Twitter, you’ll get a mashup of at least seven sources: Delicious bookmarks, Hypno NZ on Facebook, my blog, LinkedIn, YouTube, Goodreads and my mailing list. I realize that actually participating in a social network is a key element of the whole “social networking” idea, and maybe when I have more time I’ll do that, but for now, Twitter is a one-way broadcast channel for me.
If you want to talk to me, you can leave a comment on my blog or email me, and if you’re not selling something (or otherwise spamming) and are reasonably coherent, I’ll respond. In fact, I welcome suggestions (from real people, not PR professionals) on topics I might blog about that relate to my core theme: Using your mind to improve your life and health.
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