Twitter – A New Way Of Sharing Ideas and Your Work
Twitter has grabbed a lot of attention recently and many of you may have tried it out. Some may just roll their eyes when someone even mentions the word Twitter or some may just be overwhelmed with such a means of communication that requires 140 characters or less. I admit that I was bit hesitant at first but after an investment of time and learning the lingo it has become a great way to exchange ideas and bring attention to my own work.
Before going into this more I should point something out. I hear people saying they really don’t want to know about who had what for lunch or about some random everyday task. Yes we have people who use Twitter for that purpose and it’s your choice to follow them or not. Twitter is what you make of it. Some people use it for personal reasons and some use it for professional. I like to use it for directing people to my work but I also like to show my personal side within limits. Just as anything else put out there for the public to see, you want to be careful about the message you’re sending and have a purpose.
So how can you promote your work and share ideas? As mentioned in other posts, don’t be a salesperson or sound like a spammer because you will be treated as such. Actually don’t sell at all. My experience with Twitter has been to share information and post links of educational materials and images related to my profession. Every time I have a new blog post or project to share it gets mentioned. Within a short while I’ll get responses not only on Twitter but also comments on my blog. This is an interaction so I also try to comment to people who have something to share. I find that when you show an interest in certain people, they will pay more attention to you too and often spread the word about you.
Where do you find followers? Start by following interesting people and hope they follow you back. This is my criteria for people I follow. Either they are someone who may be interested in my work and/or they are someone who has something interesting to offer.
My advice is to check out people who do this well and learn from them. I see a lot of great photographers on Twitter and they all have something in common – they all have something interesting to share and they are all very active.
6 Responses to 'Twitter – A New Way Of Sharing Ideas and Your Work'
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Hi Paul,
Nice article. I learned a lot from Twitter. I got a lot of very interesting information from fellow photographers. They share tips, useful information, videos, …etc.
I don’t use Twitter to say out there what I am doing but I use it to share some of my works, get feed back and also, give useful information I found online.
It’s a very powerful tool but you have to use it carefully because you can spend a lot of time there…
You can find me on Twitter by typing @fsphotography if you want to take a lot at which information I share.
Thanks,
Frederic
I was very overwhelmed when I entered the world of twitter. One huge helpful feature to manage the madness is tweetdeck. This way I can keep track of certain photographers, artists, companies, etc.
I also use Mr. Tweet to find people with similar photography interests.
Thanks for the article & I’m glad to see ASMP tweeting!
Thank you Frederic and Amy for the great comments! I’ve been using Tweetdeck and for the iPhone app I use Tweetie. So many tools to help organize and it only gets better. So much to keep up on but it’s well worth it.
Just as Amy mentioned, Tweetdeck is great for keeping track of topics and people. I think an update may come out soon to allow more than 10 columns of search criteria. I need it!
I actually signed up to Twitter (@cfimages) twice over a period of 18 months or so before I really started using it. Connecting with other photographers and creatives throughout the world is particularly inspiring, especially on those days that are taken up with admin and office work instead of shooting. I’ve seen more fresh new work in the past three months discovered on Twitter than I had in the previous 6 via other means.
Twitter has been great to get to know other photographers (local and not so local)…people share a lot of info in 140 characters. I find it really helps to reply to people (even if you don’t know them in real life) and Re-Tweet message you think more people should see. you can find me on twitter: @andiesmith
nice research bro