Twitter Delivers Information You Need

Brad Peck
E-mail questions For Tech Tools to techtools@uschamber.com

First of a two-part series

In 1984, futurist Stewart Brand declared: "On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

Brand was talking about the price of information in money, but as we are bombarded with "free" information nowadays, the true expense is proving to be in time. What's the best source for information tailored to your needs? One answer is Twitter.

If used properly, Twitter can become your own personal wire service. Go to twitter.com and click the "Sign up now" button. Done?  Good, now here are three things to do to get started:

Search Me—From the Twitter home page, do a search on a topic of interest. I typed "small business," and 30 posts from the previous 10 minutes appeared on my screen. One was from tweetsmallbiz, which provided a link to a New York Times article that I found valuable. I then clicked on tweetsmallbiz to see all of its posts. I liked what I saw, so I clicked the "Follow" button and voila, I started my own news feed from tweetsmallbiz. Anytime tweetsmallbiz posts something, it appears on my Twitter page. If one of your sources drifts off topic or posts too often, you can drop them from your feed.

Friend of a Friend—One of the items tweetsmallbiz posted was "RT @BusinessDotGov: Successful Government Marketing-A Primer for Small Business." The RT (Re-Tweet) means that the user at (@) channel BusinessDotGov posted something that tweetsmallbiz thought valuable enough to forward. I clicked on BusinessDotGov and found a wealth of information. After clicking "Follow" to add BusinessDotGov to my news feed, I clicked on the "following" link to see all of the feeds that BusinessDotGov "subscribes" to. A couple of browsing minutes later, and I added FDArecalls, CDCemergency, SCOREMentors, and ExportGov to my feed. 

Friends of Business—Twitter is a good vehicle for receiving information from organizations you belong to. For example, my home state chamber, twitter.com/mdchamber, does a great job of posting on important business topics. To find an organization, simply search by clicking the "Find People" link. Follow ChamberMag for news from uschamber.com and chamberpost for commentary. 

In the next Tech Tools, I'll write about using Twitter to interact with your customers and market your business.