elle decor & design*sponge on why twitter matters (and how to use it)

there is a reason why social media is the topic du jour- it works, and like it or not, we all have to embrace it-  if you don't, the train is going to pass you by. at our panel last week (oy- again with the panel, m21!) we were all in agreement- you have to use the big three platforms of social media to get your brand out there: blogs, facebook pages, and twitter. you can't just blog any longer, all three need to be used in conjunction. personally, i know lots of design people who have embraced the former two, and ignored the latter (the twitters), and to do so is at your own peril, as twitter is where the conversation amongst your audience is truly happening. so wholeheartedly embracing all three platforms is simply the inarguable fact of doing business in 2011. (tip- there are social media experts who can help you with all this if it seems overwhelming).

today, elle decor.com interviewed grace bonney of design*sponge on the how's and why's of twitter, and it was a eye-opening piece. y'all should read it- go here to become enlightened...

seriously, if elle decor and design*sponge think we need to tweet, who are we mere mortals to resist? so, i'll see you on the twitters, right?

Tweet

a milestone?

or a monkey on my back?

1001 tweets, and every single one, a 140 character masterpiece. swear.

fabric paradise (and a brief twitter primer)

orli ben-dor, senior editor of house beautiful, tweeted this picture of the brunschwig & fils showroom today, and we thought it just too pretty not to share with those of you who are twitter impaired. truly, an ikat lovers paradise- we want to use them ALL.

and to those of you who are twitter impaired, we suggest you give it a go. yes, it can be a random grab bag of useless trivia "i'm making pasta for dinner- you?" but it is also a tremendous resource for disseminating information and resources. we can't tell you of the number of interesting sources for interior design products we've bookmarked since we started tweeting this summer. we are hooked, and you should be too! now we know, we know- who has time for one more thing? FB, blogs, twitter- too much, too much! but why not give up one hour of reality TV a day, and tweet instead? trust moi- it's better for your brain- you won't find pretty new fabrics while watching RHONJ...

m21 recently sent this quick primer to fellow blogger, grant k. gibson, when he was starting to tweet, but by the time we sent it, he'd pretty much figured out everything on his own. so waste not, want not and voila! an upcycled blog post!

m21's quick twitter primer

1. sign up at twitter.com and then pick one person you know- perhaps @maison21- and go though the list of who they follow, selecting anyone that sounds interesting. you can always unfollow your selections if they turn out to be a bore, or an over-twitterer. once you start following people, they will often in turn follow you back, but it's not automatic; if they don't, no biggie- it's not an insult or anything. (same thing if a tweet goes unanswered- there is a lot of stuff out there).
   
2. start sending tweets- they can be just like what you'd post as FB status updates, or they can be related to design or whatever you want them to be, just under 140 characters. RT or retweeting is a great way to establish a presence- if someone tweets something you found interesting, simply copy the whole thing with their handle (@maison21 for example) and add RT in front. it's like linking to other blogs, and a perfectly acceptable way to spread info while making your twitter presence known. in fact, retweeting is what makes twitter really work. (btw, hootsuite does this automatically for you, see #4)
3. another way for people to find your tweets is by use of #hashtags, ie putting #decor or #dogs or #foodie at the end of your tweets. people searching for those topics then find your posts. it sounds complicated, but it's not- swear.
4. m21 strongly recommends registering with a 3rd party interface to organize and schedule your tweets- the interface at twitter.com just isn't very user friendly. we use hootsuite and give it two big thumbs up (it's FREE). you can set hootsuite up to automatically tweet your latest blog posts, use it to shorten any links you might want to post (the 140 character thing means most links are too long) and also organize the people you follow into groups, then view everything all at once, all on one page- an impossibility on the real twitter site, and perhaps a reason people don't "get" twitter at 1st signup (we didn't for sure, and took us months to figure out the appeal)
   
5. watch as the numbers of people who follow you grow! m21 started tweeting in may, and now 6 months later we have over 300 followers (some of whom are admittedly spam/marketing followers- a fact of life on the twitter, but we try to weed them out). we aren't very aggressive about collecting followers either, so 300 peeps is pretty impressive in our book. you'll gain followers too, if you tweet- simple fact. but you have to interact if you want them to start following... we find tweeting is a great way to interact with people who we might not otherwise have any contact with- there is no invite system like facebook, so you can tweet with a surprising number of people you never would speak to in real life. they probably won't answer (for example, anderson cooper has yet to respond to our declarations of love), but hey- if andy ignores you, who cares! plenty of other people won't.
   
6. for you bloggers, we find tweeting more of a conversation then a blog post is, so it's an awesome way to speak with your blog community; plus the 140 character thing keeps interactions short, sweet and to the point! m21 now finds he gets a lot his news and entertainment from twitter too, so in a way, it's not a waste of time at all, since we don't have to visit a bunch of different websites- just click when we see something interesting! it's one stop web info shopping!
   

so see ya on twitter! or the fabric showrooms, or simply here, on decorative but not serious...

it's a hoot!

yeah, we know- it's a decorating blog, not a technology blog, but when m21 runs across something insanely great, he feels the need to share...

like m21, lots of our readers and fellow bloggers are twitter converts (if you don't tweet and don't 'get' twitter, stop reading now before your eyes glaze over), so he wanted to share his new favorite thing: hootsuite- the best desktop twitter tool we've tried!
what makes it so cool? well, there are too many things to mention, but we'll give 3 examples:

1. it divides your twitter stream into organizable columns- your stream, tweets you've sent, tweets where you are mentioned, and direct messages. after trying it out, m21 discovered all sorts of reply tweets that were lost in his twitter stream! sometimes he wondered if he was tweeting into outer space for lack of responses, so it's nice to know a few folks out there were paying attention. (you can also add columns of your own design, but that's still a bit advanced for m21).
2. speaking of tweeting into outer space, if you use hootsuite to shrink your tweeted links, hootsuite actually tracks how many people click on them! how cool is that? now, m21 really knows that people follow his twitter stream!
   
3. when you are in a tweeting mood, with hootsuite, you can actually schedule your tweets in advance- so instead of sending out six tweets in rapid succession, ('oh, god, m21 is bored and tweeting again'), you can spread your twitter love throughout the day!

seriously, it's good stuff. try it- it might make you a twitter fan, if you are not already! (and if you'd like to follow m21 on twitter- @maison21- he'd love to have you! warning, our twitter persona is a bit feistier then our blog, but tweets by nature are so short, you can easily ignore the icky bits). ;-)

oh, and while we are on the subject of technology, if you use a mac, m21 highly recommends installing "applejack", the best disk utility ever, and it's FREE! m21 uses it once a week, and it's kept his creaky old mac running far beyond it's shelf life (knock on wood)... applejack is a little scary the first time you run it ('what's single user mode?', what are all those scary scrolling commands on my computer screen?'), but after your first use, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. seriously, it's like magic- when you are done, your mac will be leaner and faster, and well, happier. promise. (disclaimer- m21 is far from a mac guru, and he personally has never experienced a problem with applejack, but if for some reason you do, m21 can't be held responsible, k)?

next post back to decorating. maybe.