Two-and-a-half weeks after announcing I quit Twitter, I returned to learn and share on January 22. Between then and now, I’ve tweeted about a dozen times with a schedule I am appreciating more than in the past. Before I announced my sabbatical, my tweeting schedule was whenever I felt like it — typically, 20 to 30 times a day, replying to someone here, retweeting someone there. But since my return five days ago, I’ve kept a regimen of only tweeting one to five times a day.
The reduction is in line with something Gwen Bell commented on my recent guest post about the importance of taking Twitter breaks:
I spent the last two weeks traveling internationally and had twenty minutes of internet during half the trip. It helped tremendously. At the beginning of 2010 I decided to pull back on my number of tweets per day. I imposed an arbitrary limit of max of 5 public tweets per day. It has made the difference… Sometimes the best solution to what ails us is restraint/elimination.
Perusing through my January 2010 tweets to date, I notice 590 times I hit a submit button, including 244 times on January 2 alone — when I spent most of the day sending direct @ messages replying to people or asking them questions, as this snippet indicates:
You can see how my tweeting schedule has flatlined since the first week of the month ended:
I imagine that line will remain on par through the immediate future, as I also change the people and organizations I follow — away from folks I’ve historically followed who lead with social media best practices, and closer to people who I can learn from at the crossroads of social media and government. I am also changing how I follow blogs, not just Twitter users; if I am learning from someone’s blog and commenting on that person’s posts, I am not necessarily following that person across the social web.
I’ve stated in the past that I experimented with many social tactics in 2009, and that 2010 is geared away from tactics and more toward strategies and measurable outcomes of using social media. Taking a Twitter break was a strategy and it has paid off — so far — with a new restraint on Twitter frequency, increased engagement with specific bloggers I am commenting with more often, and forthcoming ways of photo and video sharing that I’ve never done before.
For a fun amendment to the above, and sparked by a wordle Joshua Peters shared yesterday, here’s a visual representation of the Twitter lists that people currently include me within, indicative of the subject matter or geography I influence. If you’d like to create a similar Wordle.net graphic, the comment section on Josh’s blog has instructions.
{ 30 comments }
Twitter: kikolani
January 28, 2010 at 1:48 AM
Welcome back to the Twittersphere! I think limiting yourself to 5 tweets a day is a good thing, and changing those you follow to people who are going to be the most influential to you is a smart move. I had considered doing a mass unfollow up until Twitter lists hit the scene, and now I almost always just read tweets from those in lists I follow in addition to replies and direct messages.
I like that Wordle of Twitter lists you are on… I think it really helps giving a visual of how people see you. Since you cover social media, social media definitely should be the largest on your list. If you are someone who focuses on a particular topic and find your largest list word is something else, then it might be time to look at the way you tweet and see why you are not influencing people on the topic you focus on the most.
.-= New from Kikolani @ Blogging Tips: Best of #SMAZ – Blogging Tips, Social Media ROI, & SEO =-.
I plan to run a similar list wordle in the future, and if I have my way, government will be much larger than it is now.
When I first joined Twitter I used to tweet lots of useless crap and link to my own website like crazy. Just judging by the click through rates from the 1000 useless followers I built up before culling them, I would only get between 5 and 10 clicks on a link. I think we can agree that was a pretty crap twitter strategy.
These days I’m using twitter to keep track of people I’m genuinely interested in. I unfollowed all but 50 or so people and I’ve slowly built that list back up to around 100 people that I follow. Not surprisingly more than half unfollowed me when I unfollowed them which shows the quality of people I was following.
The weirdest thing I’ve found is that by interacting LESS – but doing it more meaningfully, connecting with quality people I care about, and having genuine conversations – the click through rates of any of my links (my own site or others) have gone up to 30 or 40 clicks per link with only 450-500 followers on my account.
I’m really happy to hear you’re moving more toward analysing the measurable outcomes of social media, I’ll definitely be watching closely to see the results of any experiments you do.
BTW, thanks for the tweet alerting me to this post! Feels like some sort of Ari Club being part of one of your *few* tweets of the day.. haha.
.-= New from Josh Kohlbach: Domains, Hosting and Making It All Repeatable =-.
It’s intriguing reading how you write of using Twitter to draw people to your website, rather than using Twitter to, uhh, tweet.
Haha, yeah ironic I know. I just like seeing what results I get from tweeting links (feels good to share when I find something cool/useful). I only tweet my own stuff about 1 in 50-100 links so it’s not like thats a major strategy for me. In the past I had misguided notions about what Twitter was about.
These days I do use it to “tweet” and talk to people and my point was by doing this more and more it seems I get better response than just tweeting links 100% of the time.
.-= New from Josh Kohlbach: Writing Techniques For Bricks & Mortar Business Websites =-.
Twitter: JoshSPeters
January 28, 2010 at 12:41 PM
Thanks for including the Wordle thing in you post, glad to see you back. I’m excited to hear what new insights, measurements, etc come out of your renewed usage.
.-= New from Josh Peters: So this is what you people think of me? =-.
Thanks for the inspiration.
I’ve been horrible about keeping up on Twitter. I never did tweet a lot to begin with, but I have seen some good traffic come from doing it. Seems you are getting the same result by tweeting less.
.-= New from Charles Richey@Las Vegas Homes: Real Estate Update =-.
At the end of the day, you need to do what makes you content.
Thanks for the ping, Ari. My sentiments reflect yours. It’s like when I used to read Real Simple and wish to be that organized. But then put down the ‘zine and never took the steps to get organized. Last year I stopped reading magazines altogether. This year I’ve set up filing systems that actually work (online, offline), organized my cabinets (with labels), the works. Pulling back to only checking email once a day (tutorial on gwenbell.com w/PDF if you’re interested) has boosted my productivity/organizational levels heretofore unknown.
Those of us who have been on Twitter 3+ years have tried literally every tool in the book. It takes some serious self-reflection to say, “I’m maxing folks out w/all I’m producing,” or, “I’m pushing myself beyond a place where I feel well.” And it’s great to see how you’ve shared that self-reflection with us. I’ll continue to follow along w/your journey, Ari.
Some of your decisions sound like those offered in “The 4-Hour Work Week” (which I have yet to read but have perused through), no?
You know, I read that several years ago a few days after my house burned down. It’s funny to look at your life when it has gone up in flames, literally. But it was easy to go right back to my old patterns and ways of thinking. (Helps that I mostly lived out of a suitcase before the fire – a lot less to lose.)
I no longer live out of a suitcase (strictly speaking – still, three trips by plane this month) but have made drastic steps toward living a more minimalist life this year. (Including, but not limited to, downsizing my palette for wardrobe to three colors, cutting down to two pairs of shoes, buying a 500 sq foot house, cutting back on purchases by making a “30 Day List,” etc.) Restraint is a close cousin to patience for me. Difficult to cultivate, but worth the reward to do so.
Drawing awareness to our activities (online and off) can be painful. Even the word “limiting” sounds like punishment. But it’s not. Limiting the number of times I access email each day to “one” has given me growth in nearly every other section of my life.
I think I would maintain two twitter accounts. One for friends and the other is for business. I have almost 300 twitter followers on my business account, and I don’t think I can see what others say on that account because too many noise.
Twitter is a wonderful tool but just don’t let it overflow.
.-= New from Andy: Top 10 Best Headphone Deals from Amazon.com =-.
You don’t cross the streams?
I have also been experimenting with my Twitter strategy and Twitter routine. I have established two separate accounts , one for friends and family and one for blogging and business pursuits. I took a couple of weeks of from Twitter myself recently and you know what, it was not that bad. I don’t think I am addicted to it yet like some other people seem to be.
.-= New from Davey Havok: Favorite Davey Havok song =-.
The moment you stop experimenting is the moment you accept the status quo. Not that the status quo is bad, but it doesn’t change.
Welcome back Ari! I guess I never really paid that much attention to how many tweets I make etc… probably because I generally use re-tweet buttons more that anything to share articles I am reading. I do check my replies a few times a day and try to engage that way.
Probably if I did know how much I used Twitter, I would go through the same process you are going through, so I will just keep going the way I am going now since it suits me at this point.
.-= New from Keith@Need Information: Link Roundup 1-29-10 =-.
You read an article anywhere on the web and you (re)tweet it before doing anything else? Or do you opt for other social bookmarking tools before or in lieu of Twitter?
I tend to have a similar strategy when it comes to Twitter updates. I usually have my client running in the background all day, catching quick stories here and there and gathering information from my favorite tweeple. At the end of the day (usually) I take a look at some of my favorites and retweet them, or reply to people’s questions about various topics.
Then when I’m done reacting to what other people have done, I leave a message of my own that has some bit of substance and value to it. What happens is that people see my response, click to see what other tweets I have and automatically see that my latest tweet is somewhat interesting (usually linking to the latest article that I’d written).
This week I wanted to try something a bit different with FollowFriday as well. I’ve not really taken part in the event how it is regularly used, because it seemed pointless to me. But if I find tweets throughout the week that I find particularly interesting, I can favorite those. And on #FF I can let the world know that the favorites list has been updated.
.-= New from AnotherGuy: Going AFK for a while =-.
Why do you write as “AnotherGuy” and not as, say, Bob?
I was going to write my answer on here. But I’ve decided to blog about it instead.
Thanks for the great question. Made me think a bit.
http://anotherguy.us/post/366340123/why-am-i-anotherguy
.-= New from AnotherGuy: If content is the King, then Typography is the Queen =-.
Very useful to someone about to reenter the twittersphere; the reason I quit (deleted accountr even0 was the overwhelmingness of it all.
.-= New from Dennis Edell: Hello & Welcome To The All New – DennisEdell.com/DirectSalesWebMarketing.com Merged – Direct Sales Coaching Blog! =-.
Twitter: DavidBennett
February 2, 2010 at 5:25 PM
So your next sabbatical is due in 2016. Savour it.
I just read a useful post on Daily SEO Tip on getting Google Reader to crawl a static website regularly. By ‘static’ the article means one that doesn’t have new content regularly.
So I tweeted that and sent it off to my Posterous account which is turn sends my postings to a Twitter account and a Blogger blog and a Tumblr blog. One of those in turn sends it off to Friendfeed, and so it spreads.
When I picture the architecture of this, I see Twitter as the meeting place around which all the other things revolve.
So I don’t plan to have a sabbatical, and whether it is 1, 5, or 50 tweets a day doesn’t concern me.
However, I keep thinking that the owners of Twitter must wonder whether people in droves will say one day ‘What was all that about?’ and stop tweeting….
If that works for you, great. For me, now, I can’t handle that. Too much stress. I’d rather view Twitter as a place I can visit to enhance my intellect and add something useful here or there. Like how I use Yelp to review restaurants and scope out new places to eat.
Ari, I like the way you are always testing. I’m a big proponent of that. Thanks for sharing your insights. I’ve also reduced my tweeting, and it looks like 1-5 tweets per day is becoming a norm among many of us.
.-= New from Anna Barcelos: Five Confessions of an Integrated Marketing Communications Marketer =-.
Thanks, though like I’ve written elsewhere, 2009 was about tactics and 2010 is about strategies based upon the tactical testing I already did. Reducing my tweet frequency is less of a test and more of a strategy as my mind is already made up. I’d only increase the daily frequency if presenting on Twitter at a conference or such.
You always keep me guessing!
=)
.-= New from Sid Burgess: New Years Resolution for Your Neighborhood? =-.
You planted the seed…
Welcome back to the Twittersphere. I Twit way too much. I’m sure if I limited myself I’d get more work done, but I’m a Twitter addict.
Heh, recognizing your addiction is the first step on the road to recovery.
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