Trick or Tweet

I dont Tweet, and I barely facebook and for that I am considered a social outcast.

I just dont see the need for me to broadcast what I am doing every minute of the day...I also don't see the need to do it on Facebook. Now, I do use facebook from time to time but I dont use it to the same extent that some people do. I guess I dont see or feel the need to comment on how I am feeling, what I am doing, what I am thinking, every couple of hours. Now, that being said, I DO blog, obviously. For me though, the difference is, blogging is something I do every couple of days and I usually pick a topic and expand on it. I dont blog every hour or so just to tell you that I am at a club in Toronto having a beer and hanging out with Caleb. Seriously, do you really need that sort of detail from me? would it really matter? is it going to somehow change your plans? No, I didn't think so.

Okay so I am off my soapbox and given that there are so many people out there who Tweet, I thought I would search out an article or two on the nuances of the Tweet. In all my searching, and yes, I dare you to type "Tweet" or "Twitter" into a google search box and see how many hits YOU get. So seeing as I likely have more time on my hands than the average person, and that may be a stretch given the number of Tweets and Facebooker comments that stream through, here are some interesting facts about Tweeting.

First off, to no surprise, a study has shown that approximately 40% of all tweets that get sent, are actually nothing more than useless babble. Does that really surprise? Not me, even though I am sure I need to know which dress Amy from San Jose chose to wear this morning LOL

A paltry 3.6% of all tweets were actually news, and that study eliminated any Tweets about Michael Jackson so as not to taint the study. 3.6%...are you serious? So as we can see, 96.4% of the time, the tweets being sent are really not all that useful to the majority of the public.

5.85% of all tweets were self promotion. Again, does that surprise anyone? I am more surprised that this number was not higher. Self promotion is all the rage with sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. Its not that self promotion is bad...far from it, but again, I think it has a limited audience.

Lastly, 37.5% of all tweets were just conversational...meaning they had no news value or any self promotion. They were simply a conversational point and could either be taken or left as is. Conversational as in what I do in this blog, as in just making a statement about something or responding to some other tweet.

Now, for all you professional tweeters out there, allow me to share with you some useful information from the study...when I say useful I mean, here is what you need to do to help your tweet get noticed or re-tweeted.

The best time to tweet is on a Monday or at 11:30 AM Central time. Mondays are the start of the week and most people are reading and preparing for the week. You have a strong likelihood of having your tweet re-tweeted if you post at that time or on Monday.

If you are looking for News Tweets, you might want to post on Tuesday or around 2PM. It is on that day and time that most news related tweets hit the interwave

If you are posting a conversational tweet, do so on Tuesday or between 2-4PM. By this day and/or time, most people are caught up on work or whatever they had planned and now find themselves in a position to get involved in conversational tweeting etc.

So there you have it, the ins and outs of twitter...I still dont do it, and I dont see that changing, but for those of you who do...I hope this blog helped you out a little.

For the time being, I am going to stick to good old fashioned blogging...it may seem and feel like I am traveling in the slow lane, but from this vantage point, I can be a casual observer, and I like that role a whole lot more!

LiveSTRONG!