Twitter Issues Etc
twitter issues etc
What would Lincoln do? If he had Twitter
Usually the early adopters of technology are businesses and later on it trickles down to government, non-profits and yes politics. In the last two elections, presidential candidates started using technology to gain an advantage over their opponents, especially during the primaries. Howard Dean and Barrack Obama used technology effectively and intelligently and the results speak for themselves.
These days, everybody is talking about Twitter but Twitter is so new that people are still trying to figure out how to use it beyond the basics.
This article is based on the book ‘Long John Twitter’ that goes to great length to go beyond the basics of Twitter and help a reader comprehend the power of Twitter when combined with other emerging technologies. This article is intended to help politicians and activists figure out how to use Twitter and its sister applications to get ahead or at the very least not fall behind a smarter more tech. savvy rival.
Instead of mentioning current politicians and ruffling the feathers of one or the other, we will use the names Lincoln and Douglas for this article.
If Lincoln had Twitter and its sister Apps, this is probably how it would go:
- Lincoln would first go to http://www.twitalyzer.com and get an idea of where he stands in Twitterverse. Details like Influence, Signal Strength, Generosity, Velocity and Clout would give him useful insight.
- Then he would go to an App called Twist and do a head to head comparison. Twist can tell him how often he is talked about in Twitterverse versus Douglas. If Douglas is ahead, Lincoln better giddy up.
- Time to point his browser to Tweetstats and get some insight into his own and Douglas’s tweeting habits. Is he tweeting at some ungodly hours? If so, those messages are most likely never getting read. Ideally he would like to spread his tweets evenly at times when his followers are more likely to read them.
- Time to find out who has more followers, Lincoln or Douglas. Pretty easy to do. Just type http://www.twitter.com/username and you have the details.
Armed with the above information, Lincoln and his team now needs to get down to work. They have current statistics. The objective is clear – win the election. The technology is there. How to leverage this technology to tilt the odds in favor of Lincoln.
Team Lincoln has to increase Lincoln’s followers and increase his influence with the followers. They need to show to Lincoln’s followers that he understands the issues of the day, has better solutions and can lead the way towards a better society.
Now if Lincoln has amateurs running his show, they would bombard his followers with his statements all day long till they are sick of it and tune him out. That would be a total disaster.
For a politician, having constituents and followers is great but it is quite a challenge to stay in touch, keep them engaged and motivated without wearing yourself and your team down.
Lincoln and his team are professionals so they decide to create a micro news agency. The news agency would:
- Identify the issues that matter to his constituents.
- Develop filters around those issues to identify relevant news.
- Scour local, national and international news / media sites and pick news stories according to the filters set in step 2.
- Abridge the headlines and include the URL / links to the stories while making sure they fit the 140 character limit of twitter.
- Run the URLs / Links through a link tracking system. Without that, they wouldn’t know which news story was widely read and circulated. Metrics and Analytics are very important. Without them, you wouldn’t know if you are being effective or not.
- Intersperse regularly scheduled communiqués from Lincoln linked to his blog.
Doing all this would require considerable manpower unless they use technology. Technology is meant to save on manpower and provide speed of delivery. Using the applications detailed in ‘Long John Twitter’, Lincoln and his team would set up their systems to create the micro news agency using the guidelines above. Then they would let it run without human intervention. No allocation of human resources on a daily basis at all.
The team would periodically sit down and analyze the metrics. If things need to be adjusted, they would do so. If a new issue has surfaced, they would add that to the filters and start feeding related news to the followers.
As time goes by, Lincoln’s followers would know that he is in touch with the issues that matter to them. After all, he is the one feeding them information every day. They would trust him and also re-tweet / circulate his information to other people. That would further increase Lincoln’s clout / circle of influence. Day by day, Lincoln would gain strength and that could eventually tilt the scales in his favor at the ballot.
Summary: Twitter by itself is a very basic application. Combined with it’s sister applications and human ingenuity, Twitter can be a very potent message and content delivery mechanism. Use it to your advantage.
Good Luck!
###
Body Image Issues(Skinny,Larger Etc)
twitter issues etc
Are our brains too stimulated?
Does anyone think that our brains are way too stimulated? Is this the reason that so many people suffer from anxiety related issues?
Doesn’t it seem as though you can’t go through a day without trying to accomplish a million things, while at the same time being bombarded by emails, voicemails, television, radio, facebook, twitter etc.
I wonder how we would do 50 years ago when all most people had to worry about was what was for supper?? I realize we have lots of toys and live longer today, but is it really worth it? Are we happier?
I think the problem is we’re being stimulated in the wrong way. Emails, voicmails, radio etc. are not exactly things I would not call over stimulating or even stimulating to the brain at all, I guess I’d say its stressfull entertainment if that makes sense . All those things require are either, listening to something, reading something, or typing something which is not all that stressfull because it is just using your senses. Its more of a technology overload. That technology overload could easily be stopped if we just avoided using it soo much. No one is forcing us to email or have a facebook. Anxiety disorders are a very broad topic, but if you mean people being socially stressed, maybe those things you stated could be making them worse. People have gone through many arguments and breakups through social networking sites like facebook or myspace that has effected their everyday lives. Not to mention cyber bullying.
Life used to be simpler, and for certain tribes of the world wo live unchanged by technology for years, I think their life must be alot happier than ours. We are fooling ourselves into thinking that having the latest advancement in technology to make our life easier will make us happier, which is not the case. Western “civilization” is a very materialistic and false society. We are all about making ourselves LOOK happy or well off when we in truth are not.
Tags: twitter issues etc
