Twitter for Dummies (37 page)

Twitter certainly has lofty potential for global connections on a large scale. So, how can you use it yourself? Be patient. After you build a following on Twitter and become a respected member of a strong network, you can help rally others to a cause, or even get a hand when you need some help. Your Twitter network can help you relocate across town or across the globe, find a new job, reconnect with lost family members, and even research your history and genealogy.

In one dramatic example, the use of Twitter helped someone escape potentially dire circumstances. When James Karl Buck was arrested in Egypt, he immediately tweeted a single word: “Arrested”. Instantly, his followers and colleagues were alerted to his situation and mobilized the help needed to secure his release. Read the story at
www.cnn.com/2008/tech/04/25/twitter.buck
.

Figure 13-4:
@maratriangle
makes sure that poachers don’t go unnoticed.

Organizing People Online and in Real Life

Twitter makes organizing group activities both online and in real life easy. People have used Twitter to solicit volunteers for events, rally a group around a cause, push get-out-the-vote efforts, find speakers for conferences, scout locations for get-togethers, or just have impromptu
tweetups
(a term twitterers use to refer to spontaneous real-life meet-and-greets).

Twitter helps people take online interactions into the real world. As Twitter becomes more popular and enters the mainstream, however, Twitter users may want to exercise some basic common sense when meeting people offline for the first time. Make sure to meet in groups and in public places, and tell someone where you’re going and with whom. While the vast majority of the people we’ve met on Twitter are trustworthy, we advise you not to make rash decisions about your safety.

You can use Twitter in such a wide variety of ways because of — you guessed it — how open-ended it is. Because Twitter doesn’t have any forced rules of use, beyond common courtesy and a few guidelines about balance in followers (see
http://twitter.com/faq
), Twitter users can craft their own strategies for how to use it. You can read more about Twitter etiquette in Chapter 7 and security and safety in Chapter 10.

Perhaps the best example of Twitter’s organizational power is Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. The Obama campaign used Twitter in conjunction with other social-media tools to rally grassroots support. Representatives from Obama’s team used the Twitter account
@barackobama
to post updates on the candidate’s whereabouts, announce rallies and donation drives, and answer questions from ordinary twitterers. By using Twitter, the campaign helped to foster an idea of transparency and togetherness.

Even more interesting than Obama’s use of Twitter was how his supporters used it. When Obama supporters on Twitter began to use their avatars and background images to display their support for him, the idea caught on and spread rapidly across Twitter. Twitter avatars changed to Obama-themed icons in solidarity to the cause; twitterers updated bios and tag lines; and people pointed their personal profile Web links to Obama’s campaign site. For a service as simple and stripped-down as Twitter, Obama supporters certainly found creative ways to use it to show their affinity.

Now that Obama has been in office for some time, you can see an alternative organizational effort underway among conservatives on Twitter. Feeling underrepresented on Twitter, pugilistic, and calling themselves the Top Conservatives on Twitter, these individuals use the
#tcot
hashtag to represent themselves, and to stir support for their after-election goals and events (see Figure 13-5).

Organizing on Twitter does come with some risks. Because of the crowd mentality, Twitter opinion can turn on a dime. Everything discussed on Twitter is so real-time and in the moment that something can be trendy one moment and passé the next. Take the time to set up some foundation work first — a Web site that has accurate information, a universal hashtag, and keyword tracking. Your potential attendees and volunteers will know that you mean business if you use such tools. As we go to press, infighting amongst the
#tcot
community has disabled some of the Web sites built to support and display their efforts, but you really can’t own or stop a hashtag. It belongs to those who use it most.

Figure 13-5:
A
#tcot
search, showing politically conservative tweets.

Organizing on a small scale

You can use Twitter to rally people around a cause at any level. We mention some bigger examples in the preceding section, such as Beth Kanter (see Figure 13-6), who once raised $9,000 for The Sharing Foundation orphans in 90 minutes onstage and via Twitter during the Gnomedex technology conference, and Twestival nonprofit raising $275,000 for charity: water. But what can you do in your own communities?

Even if your big idea is a local one, you can take advantage of Twitter to make it happen. Twitter empowers the user to locate and organize like-minded people online around a common goal or idea. If you need volunteers to fund-raise for your child’s class trip or school supplies, you can probably find them through your Twitter network. If you want to start a book club, try using Twitter to find members.

Taste Live

Wine and spirits enthusiasts have caught on to using Twitter as a community platform, especially the international community of wine lovers that organizes virtual tastings and real-world events. If you turn to Twitter on most Saturday nights, you can catch a glimpse of the Twitter Taste Live phenomenon (hashtag
#ttl
), shown in the figure.

This online event was started by Massachusetts wine shop Bin Ends Wines, and it has taken off as a concept all over the U.S. and abroad. The store didn’t just stop with Twitter Taste Live online events, though: They tapped the power of their Twitter network to take it offline, as well as onto other social-media channels, such as Ustream.

Organizing on Twitter does help serious causes, but it doesn’t have to be all work and no play. You can use Twitter as a tool to organize whatever kind of group you want, including those on the lighter side of life. Food and spirits enthusiasts have been taking advantage of Twitter lately: A thriving foodie community, for example, socializes online and plans dinner parties, restaurant weeks, and other offline excursions to celebrate their passion for food. This community is both international and local, at the same time. They trade recipes and ingredients, solve cooking problems, and spread the word about new restaurants together (see Figure 13-7).

Figure 13-6:
Beth’s Blog is a resource for how nonprofits can use social media, including Twitter.

Figure 13-7:
Planning to eat food. Mmm!

Banding together for creative purposes

If you want to drum up user-generated content for your company or clients, or use that content on a Web site or blog, then you can often find enthusiastic participants by reaching out via Twitter. Twitter users have banded together on creative projects of all sizes, some of which were started by corporate marketers. Tyson Foods uses Twitter and its blog to generate blog comments that trigger in-kind donations to food pantries. Marketer HubSpot often gathers people in the Boston area — both company employees and outsiders — to “star” in musical videos about inbound marketing on YouTube, and they do it by rallying the troops on Twitter.

Creative content from Twitter is definitely not limited to commercial purposes. Twitter users have planned, written, and cast whole online
Webisodics
(television-style video series based online only) via the service. When they need to change a plot or scout a location, Twitter can come to the rescue, letting interested participants help the project in real time.

Do you need to organize an audio or music challenge, such as the RPM Challenge (
www.rpmchallenge.com
), shown in Figure 13-8? Twitter can help you do that, by allowing people to participate or express interest in your idea. Twitter is also a fantastic tool for collaborating on projects. You can find co-authors, lyricists, people who play various instruments, and more, just by shooting out a few strings of 140 characters into the Twitter universe.