Chapter 12

Twitter: Time Saver or Time Waster

Twitter has had an explosive impact on how we communicate with others. The number of active monthly users of Twitter is just short of 300 million. Twitter users don't send messages, they send tweets. A tweet is an expression you have in a moment. It can be an idea or thought. You can include text, photos, or videos in your tweets. You are limited to 140 characters so brevity is essential.

There are over 500 million tweets a day shared on Twitter. They are shared in real time so communication is instantaneous. The most famous tweet was the photo of Ellen DeGeneres and friends at the Oscars. It had over 2 million “favorites” and more than 3.5 million retweets. A retweet is when someone shares someone else's tweet with their followers. A favorite is when someone wants to acknowledge your tweet. It would be similar to a “like” on Facebook. Anyone can gain a following on Twitter that enables you to communicate short messages to a larger group of people than just your grandmother. Just as with Facebook's Like button, tweets collect favorites from your followers and people who see the retweet. You can also include hashtags (#) so Twitter can better categorize or assign a topic to your tweet. This allows an ever-widening audience to see your musings.

Deciding Who to Follow

If you decide to use Twitter, you need to decide who to follow. Celebrities generally have the largest number of followers — singer Katy Perry has the most followers with more than 61 million people reading her tweets. But Twitter isn't all about the rich and famous. Although few of us would ever develop that level of devotion to our 140-character communication, just about anyone can have a Twitter account.

Twitter and time management can be mutually exclusive, though. The challenge is paring down the number of people you follow; you could be reviewing an endless stream of tweets all day and night and never get anything done. The overwhelming interruptions could dramatically reduce your ability to stay focused and productive. Limit yourself to a small group of select people at specific times (see “Preventing a Twitter Takeover” later in this chapter). If you are following 50 to 100 celebrities, you could be reviewing more than 100 tweets a day on top of your business contacts and friends and family. Because each interruption shifts your focus from what you are working on, by the time you refocus, several minutes have passed, and the lost productivity is exponential. When making the decision who to follow, consider sticking with four categories of people you want in your life.

It's easy to waste time both online as well as offline. Spending too much time communicating online can reduce productivity and mess up your time management abilities. Social interaction through social media can be productive and fun. The skill and strategy of setting up effective social media boundaries of the type of people you invest your time with online and offline can dramatically influence your utilization of time and success in life. People do influence how you feel, act, and what you believe. That's why monitoring your four categories of people and applying them to social media benefits you.

Because your mood, feelings, and interactions with others play a role in success, your career can hinge on those who you let influence your thoughts and actions. That's true, whether you're an executive, administrator, salesperson, or entrepreneur. There's Twitter trash that can invade your mental space … and you must avoid it. If someone you are following on Twitter is dumping negative tweets … next.

Keep your mindset positive and directed toward success and achieving your objectives. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can't, either way, you're right.” Ford knew that your belief and mindset will help produce the results that you desire. Staying positive, every day, is one of the hardest parts for most people. That is why limiting access to people who don't help in that effort, be it online or offline, is paramount.

I adopted a rule when I started my professional career that I still use today, especially in social media realms: Hang out only with people you can learn from, profit with, have fun with, or people you can teach. Those four types of people help you construct an abundant life. The complainers and lemon-suckers will only pull you down to their level. There is an age-old question: How do you keep a crab from climbing out of a bucket? Answer: You just put in another crab; when one tries to crawl out, the other will pull him back down. Some people are like that even in their tweets.

Those from which you can learn

Follow people who have something to teach you. If you have a career field, select people you respect, maybe who are more successful than your. Key questions to consider include:

People I follow include Brian Tracy, Seth Godin, Rick Warren, Bill Gates, and John Maxwell, to name a few.

Those with which you can have fun

This is probably the largest category of people you might follow on Twitter. Although celebrities and athletes can be part of your “fun” list, you can also include personal friends who are fun, engaging, and have quirky observations in life. Everyone needs people around them who have quick wits and are able to share it online. Some people know how to find the coolest pictures and put the right captions on them to create big belly laughs. There are others who find videos to share or create funny videos. I've got lots of personal friends who are really fun, but I think one of the funniest guys on Twitter is Jimmy Fallon.

Those with whom you can profit

Selecting people in this category can be difficult. Who could you partner with, do deals with, or create new products and services with? There can be crossover between your learn-from and profit-with lists, but you may have never met some of these folks. For example, I learn a great deal from Seth Godin; he's an innovative thinker and observer of marketing and business. And although I don't know Mr. Godin personally, he has helped me make a lot of money using his ideas in my business to increase sales and marketing.

Those you can teach

When you choose to learn from someone you follow, he or she has to be willing to teach. Teaching is the greatest joy in my life (maybe yours, too) because I love to watch people grow and prosper. When you become someone who teaches, you'll find that it dramatically improves your skill level in that particular subject. I know more about sales and success from teaching and coaching for the last 15 years than I learned in my entire sales career. There also is a great joy in the teaching process. Become successful in any field and you will be able to share in that joy. As you grow and advance your objective should be to get skilled enough in what you do so you can share it with someone. I certainly feel blessed for the honor of being able to teach and positively impact people's lives.

Preventing a Twitter Takeover

Twitter has an app that can be downloaded to any cell phone with an Android or Apple operating system and can make sending and receiving tweets more efficient. At the same time, however, it makes Twitter accessible 24/7/365. You can create your own settings and preferences so that your phone isn't constantly blowing up with Twitter tweets.

When using Twitter, you must invest the time to determine which mentions, replies, interactive notifications, followers, favorites, updates, or even specific people are important to you. Sign into your Twitter account, go to Settings, and then select your mobile tab. From there, you can select your options for text notification. My rule is, when in doubt leave the notifications off. For more information about Twitter and how to control your settings and preferences, check out Twitter For Dummies by Laura Fitton, Anum Hussain, and Brittany Leaning (Wiley).

After you set your notifications and preferences, you can also set restrictions for yourself! Limit yourself to specific times and duration when checking your Twitter account. Consider allowing yourself a guilty Twitter pleasure only after you're ready for work; or reward yourself an hour before going to bed.