I developed my Twitter practices based on a decade of academic research on religion, culture, and emerging media. Twitter can make you smarter if used correctly. Here’s how:
Identify Relevant Trends
Publish 10-20 Tweets per day, a combination of retweets and originals. At the end of the week you’ll have about 100+ to review. Take time to synthesize what you tweeted during the week, and this will solidify your understanding of the most relevant trends – like writing short papers in school. Aggregated information can be leveraged in writing articles, blog posts, adapting to PPT presentations, or any number of things.
Sharpen Judgments
Daily Tweeting helps to make concise judgments about what is the most important. The necessity to distill your point into 140 characters or less forces you to think clearly about your audience. Similarly, the short length keeps other people’s information down to a minimum.
Quality Filter
Don’t read blog posts if you’re in information gathering mode, skim them first. Use Twitter as a first line of research, almost like a social bookmarking tool. Mountains of information can seem mind blowing and overwhelming.
Determine if the post is “good enough” to share – each tweet you are effectively publishing something to thousands of people. You don’t have to read every word of everything you endorse, just enough to decide if it is relevant RIGHT NOW. Wait until you have time to review a few posts to decide if it signifies an actual trend.
Followers Serve as Research Assistants.
Each tweet involves a process of quality filtering. Twitter followers are people that you trust enough to share relevant information. Follow the right people and you create a funnel of information about news and emerging trends delivered instantly in real time.
80/20 Rule
I follow people who publish relevant links generally 80% of the time. If more than 1 out of 5 tweets is a personal update or message to someone else, I stop following, unless I consider the person to be a real thought leader. You have to make judgment calls here, but for the most part if the person is really important, someone else will retweet the best posts.
Lists are Like Focus Groups
Lists turn Twitter users into research assistants, and groups of them into focus groups. My interests generally fall into four categories:
- Social Media
- Spirituality/Meditation
- Innovation/Creativity
- Current events
Lists allow you to segment information from trusted sources for quick reference. They are also excellent to use if you want to find new people to follow. Follow other people’s lists who are experts that you trust.
Beware of the Twitterati
I rarely look at my main Twitter feed because it is clogged with social posts from people who have 30,000+ followers. I keep following thought leaders because occasionally I want to know what they are saying, but for the most part I only use lists.
Many Twitter users are aspiring thought leaders (myself included) and so they like to feel part of the community chit-chat. Pop your head in before going to a conference, pick up some talking points for networking, but otherwise avoid getting caught in the trap that you’re being productive by reading someone is stuck on a plane. Tune out the noise – thought leaders usually express their main opinions on blogs.
Stay Grounded In the Present
Remember, the Buddha says desire is the cause of all suffering. Don’t get carried away trying to stay on top of everything. It is impossible to make qualitative judgments on significant trends when you are stuck in the trenches. You need to step back in order to move forward. Adopt these practices and you’ll start to make synthetic analysis quickly and more concise insights – and over time, you will become smarter!
