Ten Minutes of Twitter

I have to confess to being a “twittermittent”. That is, I jump onto my Twitter feed only occasionally, and I often don’t read more than a few dozen tweets before moving on to my next task. Remarkably (or perhaps not), I almost always come across something of value, an insightful comment, and great quote, a brief piece of really good advice, or a link to an interesting article.

My ratio of following/followers is quite the opposite of the Twitter Superstar. I am following over three times as many people as follow me. While this does nothing to boost my self-esteem, it does provide me with a steady stream of posts from others, and many – if not most – of them are worthwhile. There is a nice mix of categories involved in the accounts I follow: personal friends, business associates, media outlets, professional organizations, nonprofits (one of my specialty areas), business and social media advisors, even a few celebrities (the really clever ones).

It’s Monday morning and a holiday in the US, so what follows may not be completely typical, but I thought I would just share about a 10 minute slice of my Twitter life, in the hopes that it might inspire someone to use Twitter, to return to Twitter, or to look at Twitter a bit differently than before. Just for reference, the time is 0940 Central Daylight. I signed in at about 0930, and since that time there have been 89 new Tweets from the 1,590 accounts I follow. A quick run through these postings shows me that only about four or five people posted more than once and a couple of those posted several times, so I would guess there are about 75 unique posters in the group.

It looks like a healthy handful of the postings are from what I would consider “commercial publishing” sources. By this I mean organizations whose main business is stories and articles for public consumption. I’m talking about @HuffingtonPost, @FastCompany, @nytimes, @Wired. Another cluster are from social media experts I follow, people I have learned a lot from over the past few years. These include both individuals (@GuyKawasaki, @JeffBullas, @jowyang) and organizations (@HubSpot, @socialmedia2day). As noted, I also have a few Tweets from businesses that are important to my consulting work, including @commonwealthfund, @urbaninstitute, @JohnsHopkinsSPH, and @KaiserFamFound.

Here are a few of the gems I am able to mine out of these postings. Remember, they all came in within at 10 minute window, and there were less than 100 total, but they included:

Good Ideas

Harvard Students have created a new, open use tool for collaborative work on journal articles, although I expect it could be used for other purposes as well.

Tips on how to stop overreacting.

How creativity exists in all of us.

How to invite your staff to become active partners in your organization.

Saying no in the nicest possible way.

The best financial goals for every generation.

The cities you should consider if you are a college graduate looking for work.

Useful Quotes

“The biggest mistake is to sit still.”

“Policies are many, principles are few. Policies will change, principles never do.”

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”

“Either you run the day, or the day runs you”

News Updates

Heroin Deaths on the Rise in New York City

Long Term Unemployment in the US

The History of Labor Day

Of course, there is a fair amount of fluff mixed in with all of this as well. Do I really care whether Jennifer Aniston or Billy Bob Thornton was hurt the most when Brangelina came into being? Will yet another “ice bucket challenge” complete my day? And what about a kitten photo? Nonetheless, I am pleasantly surprised by how the useful/frivolous ratio of just a brief foray into Twitter is definitely on my side. If you see the point, here are my suggestions:

1. Make sure you are following a representative number of worthwhile folks on Twitter. (I am @Innovaision by the way)

2. Visit your Twitter account now and then, even 10 minutes can provide you with some great ideas, inspiration, and news.

3. Have a way to save things for later reading ( I like Pocket myself ) because you won’t always have time to look in depth at the moment.

There are many other great tips for maximizing the value of Twitter, I hope these are helpful!