Everything I Needed to Know I Learned on Twitter

There are many great resources to guide you in get­ting started on your Twit­ter career (Chris Brogan’s Twit­ter Eti­quette Guide is a par­tic­u­larly good starter). Many of these guides help you by draw­ing the con­nec­tion between real-life eti­quette (e.g. cock­tail party behav­iour; intro­duce your­self, lis­ten before speak­ing, etc.) and your Twit­ter life. But I’m actu­ally expe­ri­enc­ing the reverse-there a few key things that Twit­ter has taught me about rela­tion­ships and how to cul­ti­vate them that I didn’t know before. In other words, Twit­ter has taught me lessons about life. I’m going to use exam­ples from my very own Twit­ter account to demon­strate what I’ve learned since Twit­ter came to town:

• Make oth­ers feel good about their suc­cesses: I love hear­ing that someone’s enjoyed a blog post I’ve writ­ten or a link I’ve shared. And because I know that, I’m always delighted to be sup­port­ive of oth­ers. On Twit­ter you do it by ReTweet­ing (RTing), reply­ing to a post or DMing some­one to say “good job.” In real life you do it by thank­ing peo­ple, com­pli­ment­ing them in front of oth­ers, or tak­ing a quiet moment to tell them you’ve noticed some­thing they’ve done well.
• Be Gen­er­ous: On occa­sion I throw a ques­tion up on Twit­ter like “What’s the story with the new Canada post mail­boxes?” I’ve also used Twit­ter to put out a call for help like when I was search­ing for Grannies for the Fiesta Farms web­site. Peo­ple extend their gen­eros­ity by answer­ing the call. And I in turn do the same. This is the key to com­mu­nity build­ing. And, it’s just good karma. So now when some­one ran­domly asks me if I can help them tear-down at an event I’ve enjoyed being at, I lend a hand.
• Be Open: Meet­ing new peo­ple is fun. Fol­low­ing friends of friends of friends can lead to…new friends. You never know what you might dis­cover by fol­low­ing some­one new. I fol­low Gui Ali­nat (@chefgui) on Twit­ter. Gui is a French born chef who lives in Tampa, Florida. Don’t ask me how I started fol­low­ing him. I couldn’t tell you. I do know that the other night we were Tweet­ing about what we were eat­ing when the rest of the world was watch­ing the Super­bowl and eat­ing Chilli. I was eat­ing Moules Frite and he was hav­ing left­over Veal Cheeks (who has veal cheeks hang­ing around in their fridge?) and we were fast friends. I apply this to other events I go to. Some­one may not look like your type, but I’ve met many great peo­ple by strik­ing up a con­ver­sa­tion and see­ing where it goes.
• Be bold: At an fundrais­ing event the other night, I was annoyed that peo­ple were speak­ing over the char­i­ta­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tive who was there to talk about the dev­as­ta­tion in Haiti. I started typ­ing a Tweet that was milder than I really felt about the sit­u­a­tion. Than I thought screw it, I’m going to say it the way I want to. I wrote “When at a fundraiser you should be quiet when some­one from the char­ity gets up to speak.” Oth­ers agreed, and it was re-tweeted sev­eral times. Of course there are times, in the real world, when it makes sense to soft-pedal issues. But more often than not, peo­ple like you best when you take a clear stance on an issue.

Twit­ter has enriched my life. It has. It has intro­duced me to new peo­ple and a much more social way of being in the world. Unlike Face­book, where it’s all about chat­ting with ‘friends,’ build­ing rela­tion­ships with vir­tual strangers is tremen­dously edu­ca­tional and hum­bling. I’m learn­ing that there’s still alot more to learn–both online and off.

What has social media like Twit­ter, Face­book, etc. taught you about life?

Related posts:

1. twit­ter fight: Shel Holtz vs. Kurt Vonnegut