How I tweet – Part 1

In light of @chrisbrogan and @guykawasaki’s posts on how they tweet, I thought I would share with you how I tweet. I’ll assume you really want to know :)

I’ll start from the very beginning, a very good place to start.  I created an account on Twitter about a year and a half ago.  One of my Facebook friends status updates always read, “is twittering:” and I was curious what she was so nervous about all the time…

I went through the basics – username, password, etc, and following people in my address book who were using Twitter (all of 2).  I have to admit, like most, I had no freakin’ clue what to do or how this was supposed to be used. Naturally, my facination with it didn’t last long.

It wasn’t but a few months later that I got the pink slip due to downsizing and I thought to myself “Well, crap, better get on Twitter.” See, although I had been managing a 30k + member online community for over 2 years, I really hadn’t wrapped my brain fully around what was going on in OTHER communities, unlike mine.

But what I did know, was that whatever it was that was next for me, was to be found on Twitter.

Long story, longer, as hard as I tried I could not locate my former account. So, I started again from step one, calling myself @Miss_Banana. (Why banana is my nickname will be saved for another post – and yes – it’s a clean story.) Picture, check. Location, check. URL, check. Bio, check. Name & Username, check.

Time to start tweeting, or twittering or whatever its called.  I can’t even remember what my first few tweets were, but it was football season and I remember being very active on the weekends and during games (watch out – football season isn’t far away). I spent the weekdays following others, lurking, reading and absorbing all I could. I would jump in when I: 1) thought I had something interesting to contribute and 2) could muster up the courage to actually post it.

My first follow: @JuliaRoy … not long after @chrisbrogan. I followed every person in Austin I could find (Not only is Austin where I happen to live, but there are cool people here, and I quickly found out that the social media and techie community was no exception.) I followed everyone that I saw in an @reply from someone I followed.  I was a follower MANIAC, trying to soak up and absorb as much information as I possibly could.  I read and bookmarked dozens and dozens of blog posts each day; subscribed to feeds for the “good ones”.

It wasn’t long before someone pointed out that I wasn’t going to make it far with the username @Miss_Banana.  I really appreciated that – as up until then, for the most part, I had been using twitter on a more personal level, but of course i wanted to be taken seriously in the long run.  That’s when @katebuckjr was born (I’ll save the “jr” story for another post as well.)  Somewhere along the way, I started using Tweetdeck, began playing with backgrounds, and stopped hanging out on Facebook all day.

There for awhile, I didn’t personally know anyone who followed me on Twitter, nor vice-versa.  And this was a good thing.  I found a comfortable voice for myself, and I found that 140 character posts were fun!  It gradually got easier and easier to post updates. At some point I must have realized the whole world wasn’t hanging on my next tweet.

katebuckjr

Kate Buck (otherwise known as @katebuckjr on Twitter) is the Founder and CEO of KBJOnline, a social media management and consulting agency in Austin, Texas. Kate has worked with some of the top names in Internet Marketing as well as consulted with dozens of entrepreneurs, businesses and nonprofits both across the United States and internationally. She has hosted wildly popular events at leading interactive marketing conferences around the country as well as developed a social media manager training program in which more than 10,000 people have participated. You can follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/katebuckjr

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