One thing that’s been an ongoing irritation to me has been the take-up of Twitter by a lot of my close professional working friends.  That take up being practically zero – a few dabbles within the system, only to then add to the more than 60% of users that quit using the service within a month of joining.

Even more frustrating has been the fact that the major reason for them leaving is usually something along the lines of “it’s just like FB updates – rubbish”, “I’m really not interested in celebs”, or “I really don’t want to know what you ate for dinner last night.”  Generally, a misunderstanding of the potential the system has for use outside of the lifestyle/celebrity crowd, and the usefulness it brings to work, networking, & news (a fact not generally touted by users or Twitter themselves).

So, it’s with that in mind that I’ve taken it up to put together a Twitter guide for the professional newbie; how it can help with news, connecting within your industry, how helpful it can be for day to day working and how you can incorporate it into your professional life – without being bombarded with the latest celeb scandals and other irrelevant information.

I’ve split the guide up into parts to make to a little easier to take in.  In this first part, I’m just going to outline the various uses of Twitter (plus some examples) just to straighten out the myth that it’s not just a Facebook updater.

One common assumption that people struggle with is realising what Twitter really is – the most frequent description I hear from the  non-believers being that it’s  just a ‘Facebook Updater’ network; only being a slice of Facebooks functionality and not worth looking into. Wrong!

It really is different things to different people, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so good – it’s that flexible you can use it for all manner of functions.  It’s generally described professionally as a ‘microblogging service’.  I’ll go into how it can be used shortly, but personally, I view Twitter predominately as a combination of 3 main tools;

1. RSS Reader; to deliver articles & news straight to my feed.
2. Messaging & discussion program; to have conversations online with anyone who has a twitter account – whether they know me or not.
3. Blogging tool; a place to post my thoughts and findings to anyone who’s following me – and hopefully get feedback on those or start a discussion.

It’s a constantly updating feed, with information from everyone I’m following; whether that be finding out what someone had for breakfast (generally not my area of interest), knowing what’s getting discussed in Westminster today,  finding out the latest footy scores, or getting help with an Excel problem that’s got me stumped.  It’s such a useful program, this is one of the reasons once people get hooked on it, they come to rely on it as a tool for all these needs in one place.

OK, so how do these functions relate to practical uses, especially for a working professional? Here’s just a few examples…

• Breaking News – If you’re a news junkie, Twitter will probably be your new best friend.  Regardless of if it’s breaking world news, business news, funny news, or specific news about your industry of work, with a little investment you can get all the relevant information as it happens, straight to your account.  Twitter news outlets are notorious for getting news out there before things come onto the main commercial channels, so you’ll usually know about things before they go public – and by tailoring your followings, you can get just the useful news that matters to you.  You can easily cut out anything that start to become irrelevant.
• Tip, Tricks, Articles & Links – Any online information relevant to your industry and your place of work.  Be it the environment, politics, retail, stocks, healthcare, and on and on… There are some great providers our there – both individuals and organisations – that publish some really useful information.  Articles and publications from your industry, new developments across businesses, on the job tips, and information that can be hard to hunt down through search engines alone can all easily be sent straight to you Twitter feed if you’re following the right accounts.
• Networking & Help – Once you’re setup with an account you can send a tailored message to anyone else on Twitter; and if they follow your feed, you can send them a private message.  This functionality gives the program excellent social appeal.  You can speak to leaders in your industry that you would never have been able to reach previously.  You can get involved in discussions with them, speaking to a range of people across the world that work in your area – something that’s never been available before and you’ll find after a while it really start to change the way you communicate. Problems with a project? Struggling with some programming? Twitter can be a great resource for help too, rather than digging around on support forums, sometimes sending out a tweet to a few select people can yield wonders in return.  Meeting experts around the world that work in your area is a great experience, really opening up communication channels across industries.  And because it’s persistent, you can have conversations over several days if you’re ran off you’re feet.

More to come in part 2…