Assorted Stuff & Nonsensical Twitterish

I was considering posting a heavy duty expose on this and that for today, but decided against it. I’m up against a hard magazine article deadline and am pouring my energy into making sure that what I deliver is polished to perfection. Or at least is something I’ll be proud of!

Making Good Use Of Twitter

twitterIn any event, I’ve been making good use of Twitter over the past few weeks, by following people who are relevant to what I write about (cars, mostly) while twittering away to the tune of ten to twenty tweets each day. That is, if I have something beneficial to share.

Funny how you can dismiss something simply because you don’t understand it all that much. A few years back, in June 2007 to be precise, I mentioned how I found people online and where they could find me online.

Not An Early Adopter By Any Stretch Of The Imagination

I casually mentioned, “…but I think I’ll sit Twitter out” when I described my approach to social networking. Admittedly, I’m a more recent convert to Twitterdom, having come around to understanding how useful it can be. Sure, you can go crazy with it, but I’ve been able to get quite a bit out of many of the 140 or fewer character tweets that I have been reading.

Yesterday, I connected with a one-time client, Vinny, who is a Cadillac enthusiast who happens to also live in New York City. Though I’m not able to attend the New York International Auto Show in April, he will be there and plans to take plenty of pictures of various Cadillac models and concepts.

I mentioned that if he was to send a photo my way, I would post it on one of my sites, giving him full attribution. As you can see, this is a good win-win opportunity for us both.

Helpful List Of Do-Follow Sites

I also snagged a link from Andy Beard who shared information about a report created by Alex Goad which lists scads of do-follow sites where you can leave one-way links.  Sure, it could become a webmaster’s worst nightmare if spammers game the list, but a lot of the sites are familiar to everyone and likely to be on guard for such mischief. A terrific find!

Little did I know that Twitter is also a very good search engine too.  Sure, it isn’t as thorough as Google, but if you are looking for concise and highly relevant information, there is a lot of useful stuff that turns up.

Just don’t expect to see ads on Twitter…at least yet. How they make money off of this concept is a mystery to me, but its value as an internet destination is something I’m sure some of the web giants would love to absorb.

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  • By Lillie Ammann, March 20, 2009 @ 6:30 am

    Matt,

    It seems that everyone is singing the praises of Twitter these days. I just read in a book promotion newsletter about a Web site that improved their Alexa ranking by 20% in a few weeks, and they gave all the credit to Twitter. Even one of my least tech-savvy clients just got on Twitter.

    Yet I’m still resisting …

    Lillie Ammanns last blog post..Healing Miracles: Part 3—Thanks Be to God

  • By Matt Keegan, March 20, 2009 @ 7:58 am

    Resistance is futile, Lillie!

    As I mentioned, I was by no means an early adopter of Twitter. In fact, I thought that it was pointless and a waste of time.

    Clearly, it can be misused but I find that Twitter offers a wonderful hook that draws people to your tweets and to your website.

    As writers, we already know how to write smashing headlines, but we need to come up with a pithy intro that still allows the pasting of the URL. With just 140 characters to work with, it can be challenging but immensely awarding.

    I certainly can see how someone got a rise in traffic to their site. If what they have is good information, then that traffic can be permanent and/or should result in increased sales.

    Matt Keegans last blog post..Past Due Auto Loans Surge

  • By Deb S., March 20, 2009 @ 8:56 pm

    Interesting post. Lots of valuable information. I appreciate your candor. Keep us posted on your experiences with Twitter.

    Deb S.s last blog post..Quotes of the week

  • By MattK, March 21, 2009 @ 4:52 am

    Deb, I plan to dig deeper with Twitter. I’m finding things there that I never knew existed, a good mine field (or should I say mind field) for all kinds of great information.

    MattKs last blog post..Weekly College Planning

  • By Jimm, March 22, 2009 @ 2:59 pm

    Lillie Ammann I’m agree with you-that’s all right.And Matt Great post ;)

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