Laura Fitton, twitter pioneer, author of “Twitter for Dummies” and CEO of new startup oneforty, shares her #1 tip for success on twitter:

Be Selfless

Other tips that Laura offers for any social media platform are: listen, learn, care, and serve. If these rules are applied, she says, “You will absolutely have success.”

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 Michelle Maura is an Organizational Psychologist, singer and Yoga teacher. She practices Mantra Yoga Meditation and Hatha Yoga, while studying Yoga philosophy. Michelle shares her thoughts on her blog Thoughts Are Things, while also contributing at Intent.com. She focuses on the importance of looking at the positive side of every situation in life and always moving forward. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/michellemaura.

There are infinite uses one can give to Twitter- from online marketing, to sharing interesting information to filling in moments of boredom or loneliness. There are also varying degrees of Twitter usage- there’s the user that will go online for 20 minutes a day and check older tweets as mini emails, there’s the person who logs on after every break to update others and themselves on the day’s happenings, and there are the hard core users who use software like Tweet Deck or have apps on their mobiles to notify them of every tweet possible, audio alert and scheduled tweets included.

Whether you are new to the vast and still growing Twitterverse or already feel established your tweet space, you might have asked yourself this question just how much Twitter is good for you. Here are a few questions that might help you get your answer.

  How much Twitter is good for you?

• Are you using social media to establish your product or company on the market, and would like to enjoy the advantages Twitter offers?
• Are you aiming to promote yourself because you like the idea of being a microcelebity?
• Are you going through a lonely stage in real life and hoping to meet fellow tweeters and feel more connected?
• Are you engaged in your goals and activities and simply like the additional social advantages of Twitter?
• Are you only looking to share information with like minded people, or learn new things from those who think differently?

As you see, the uses of Twitter can be as diverse as the amount of personality types that exist.

There are also many reasons to enjoy tweeting. Twitter was intelligently designed to make you want more. Remember these programs are designed by people who study the psychology of social media and who wish to expand the amount of users as well as frequency of tweets. But everyone who was once a child knows that you can’t have all the candy you crave. Sometimes “no” can be a healthy addition to your Twitter vocabulary.

The idea is for you to find your own motivation and balance it out with fulfilling your responsibility, hobbies and aspirations in your own life. If you can do both things successfully, happily tweeting without feeling that it has a vacuum effect while taking away valuable time from your achievements, you are on the right track.

Can you manage to use Twitter productively without giving up your achievements in real life?

Here are some tips to make your Twitter experience more fruitful, while making sure you have time for yourself:

1. It’s OK to miss some of the action. Unless you have nothing to do with your life, chances are you’re going not going to be able to read every single tweet of everyone you’re following. That’s fine. Twitter conversations can be similar to chat rooms, but they can also be similar to email. You can check @replies and direct messages sent to you at a later time.

2. Use a Twitter application to enhance your tweet management. There are various applications that can offer a more organized experience of Twitter, rather than just using the web site. These applications, such as HootSuite and TweetDeck, separate the general stream of tweets from those mentioning you, into two categories: public @replies and direct messages.

3. Create a tweet bank. You don’t need to wait for some tweet time to come up with your tweets. There are things that you want to share in real time, but there are other things that you can decide in advance. Make a list of websites, blogs, pics, news, quotes and anything else you that is of interest to you and might be of interest to your followers.

4. Schedule some tweets in advance. If you don’t have the time to tweet as often as you’d like, there’s no reason why you can’t. There are a few sites like Twuffer and HootSuite that allow you to write your tweets in advance and schedule them to be posted later. For example, you can schedule a tweet to be posted every hour, or as often as you’d like, without needing to worry about it.

5. Take a Twitter break. Set a few times a day when you can check in with your tweeples. For example, a few minutes of your lunch break, while you’re resting. Update yourself with what’s going on, and share anything you’d like to comment on about your day/work/other. Be sure to be reasonable with the amount of time you set aside. It’s good as long as it doesn’t take away time from a more important/urgent matter.

These are just some ideas to get started. Feel free to add your own as you see fit. We can enjoy the benefits of Twitter while making the most out of our lives too.

The trick is to find a balance that works for us.

Post Author:  Michelle Maura  /  Web:  Thoughts Are Things  /  Twitter:  Follow Me!

This “Twitter – What’s all the fuss about” post written by Beth Frysztak (@bethfrysztak) was originally published at Beth’s Blog:  Network Your Life, in April 2009.  Beth is a cool twitterer, charasmatic leader, successful marketer & Mom of 2 who thoroughly understands how to satisfy customers.  She is passionate about networking and “all things connected”.

Beth Frysztak

Twitter, is a micro-blogging service. It allows you to send short, 140 character “tweets” rather than typing an entire blog (as I am right now), You can “tweet” anything from getting coffee…to the days headline news. When Twitter was launched, I am sure there were only a handful of people who all followed each other! That soon became a hundred….then thousands. In fact, in the early stages of Twitter (in my humble opinion) the entire Twitter following was probably no more than the number of followers that I have today! (1,685 as of this afternoon (April 18, 2009) – in case you were wondering).

So, “What’s all the fuss about?”

What I receive out of Twitter-and my Twitter followers (whom I just adore!) is an unexplainable pleasure of “tweeting” the news of the day, a business article I have found, “re-tweeting” a fantastic quote or link and sharing stories of my life. Sometimes, my “tweets” are notions of nothing really important.

I hope that my followers appreciate my “tweets” as much as I appreciate theirs. It’s amazing and incredible that there are so many followers I have – and most I have never met face to face! If I learn something from someone each day – I am fulfilled.

I follow all kinds of peeps. I follow social media and marketing leaders (marketing is my business, so I have this insatiable need to read, read, and read more on any marketing topic!). I follow friends, to keep up with their daily coffee run, their frustration with work, their concern for “Twitter Addition” and their “run ins” with animal control. Some younger, some older and each and every one I have learned from

My followers all have their own “tweet style”. Some sit silently and read my tweets, some re-tweet my tweets if they have found it to be interesting, some send an @ reply or a DM saying – “Thank you so much!”, and of course, there is #followfriday when we can tweet out who we think that others should follow!

I wonder, as I sit and type this:

• “Are my followers enjoying me as much as I do them?”
• “Are my followers learning something from me each day?”
• “Have I put a smile on a follower face with a tweet today?”
• “Has someone Laughed Out Loud (LOL) at any of my tweets?”
• “Does anyone else ever think about this?”
• “Does any of this really matter?”

The answer is YES! If I had to choose the one thing that has made me a twitter-a-holic? Well, it is my followers of course! I am the lucky recipient of reading tweets of the “day in the life” of all those I follow! I learn from you and thank you!

“… knowledge must continually be renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of marble which stands in the desert and is continually threatened with burial by the shifting sand. The hands of service must ever be at work, in order that the marble continue to lastingly shine in the sun. To these serving hands mine shall also belong.” (Albert Einstein)

To my Twitter family….I hope we never stop learning from one another.

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This "Ode to Twitter" post written by Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton originally ran on Pistachio Consulting’s website in August 2007.   Laura has since helped explain Twitter to thousands, including Guy Kawasaki, Johnson & Johnson and Harvard Business School.  Most recently, she wrote Twitter for Dummies and founded www.oneforty.com to help people take advantage of all the Twitter ecosystem offers.

Laura Fitton

Let me come clean about my Twitter adoption “arc:”

The wise student hears of the Twitter & practices it diligently. The average student hears of the Twitter & gives it thought now & again. The foolish student hears of the Twitter and laughs aloud. If there were no laughter, the Twitter would not be what it is. -Lao Tzu (well, sorta)

I was foolish. If you think Twitter’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen, I hear you.

But I evolved.

I recently tweeted what Twitter is to me:

water cooler, colleagues, sanity check, ideas, advice, good tips, friends, company, connections, inspiration. oh ya & network.

I poo-poohed Twitter in March, grudgingly tried it on May 17, and 4 days later met my first real world Twitter friends (aka, drank the Kool Aid.)

I began to see how creative/productive Twitterers can inspire. I used it to surround myself with role models. I started getting to know people, and to enjoy the company, humor, conversation and great links. Just by way of writing, reading and responding to each other’s tweets, unbelievably valuable networking contacts have become familiar workday presences. I’ve met and hired 3 subcontractors for my business, met numerous potential collaborators and even found extraordinary new business leads. I’ve been to numerous networking and social events (lifesavers for a WAHM in a new city!). Interesting, creative, challenging, thoughtful and very deeply caring people have come into my life. New ones seem to appear every week. Twitter has served up answers, opinions and inspiration. It’s saved my sanity and yesterday, my dishwasher.

Hugh McLeod’s mentioned both flippantly (April) and seriously (June) that Twitter has slowed his blogging. I’d blame summer for my recent slowdown, but maybe it’s Twitter. But as a wise ninja pointed out, Twitter also improves blogging by absorbing your off-theme tidbits, good links, quotes, questions and other scraps of ideas. It ain’t called microblogging for nothing. But it’s true my blog posts are more detailed and thought out now, the quick cool stuff goes on Twitter.

Because it’s a business and personal tool for me, I Twitter about a LOT of different things. Great finds from my feed reader, impulsive ideas, replies both sassy and heartfelt. I tweet pointers to new blog posts when they go up. Twitter’s kept me company and has let me blow off steam, comfort a friend, and get exposed to completely opposite thinking from my own. On Twitter, we share and promote each others’ ideas and media. We celebrate birthdays, promotions, graduations and anniversaries. We look out for someone traveling or near the site of a disaster. We introduce and we randomly discover each other. Some I follow are just plain entertaining. Others I look up to and hope to meet.

We also combine the power of our collective news/intellectual interests. I get the “best of” ideas that various Twitter friends read or create, any given day. This magnifies the depth and breadth of information I consume. Imagine if your “water cooler” at work were also a wire service/editorial desk? Yeah. Something like that.

Sure, Twitter contains a huge % of “what I had for breakfast.” But the elegance is this: Everyone starts out with nobody listening to them and nobody to listen to. How and who you add determines what Twitter will become for you. Nobody can tweet at you without permission. You add people. People add you. You see interesting exchanges and add new people. Read the Twitterstream of anyone who adds you to decide whether you want to hear what they have to say. Meet someone at an event and you can connect on Twitter to get to know each other’s thoughts a little, over time.

If you used your TV or radio to listen to EVERYONE on your block broadcast their every random sound or video, you’d dismiss radio and TV as useless. If you look at everyone on Twitter at once and complain about futility, you’re missing the chance to find interesting connections and dig in slowly. Before you dismiss Twitter, find some bright, engaging, thoughtful tweeters* and follow them for a little while.

So there it is. I’m an addict. I’m a poster child for Twitter, and I couldn’t be happier about it. If you don’t”get” twitter yet, that’s ok. I’ve been there too.

* I’d have to write a whole separate post to shout out my Twitter favorites and what each one brings to the table. So please, post your suggested “Twitterers to follow” in the comments.

UPDATE: Annotated pic from today’s Tweeter-Q

UPDATES 08/28/2007: Chris Brogan on Twitter; Dave Davison on Twitter ROA; Guy Kawasaki joins Twitter.

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