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Twitter - The New Information Ecosystem & Its Amazing Reach Potential

These days more and more of us are finding we are falling victim to information overload.

With literally millions of blogs and websites on the Internet, all veying for our attention, it's becoming increasingly difficult to both keep up and take part in the conversation.

The use of RSS feed readers has been a blessing in many respects, with the ability to aggregate multiple sources and quickly assess what we want to read in more detail. However, you are still tied to having to find and add your own sites of interest and their corresponding feeds. There is also no means for immediate response or discussion.

Enter Twitter . . .

I suggest, if you are new to Twitter, that you firstly read my article, Using Twitter ... 'The Smart Way', to get yourself up to speed.

These days I use Twitter as my main infosource, benefiting from its ability, through applications such as Tweetdeck, to continually push the very latest information (useful links, feedback and commentary) to my desktop and in front of my eyes for immediate digestion, review and onward distribution.

The other great key feature of Twitter, is that you can build your own network of news gatherers, writers and commentors. These can range from authorities in their niches, to news sources, to those that share interests with you, to friends and collegues. Each of these groups in turn have their own networks feeding them information.

Think of it as accessing one giant, ever-growing brain.

Of course, each person in your network, and potentially their followers onwards (through sending on / 'retweeting'), also have access to the information you tweet. Those that comes across you through a third party's retweeting can also add you to their own immediate network. I'm sure you can appreciate the potential here.

As an example, my own Twitter 'Tribe' is made up of 1,952 followers. When each of their own followers is taken into account my reach is a massive 2,832,733 people (source: Twinfluence), which is growing at a velocity of 14,829 a day!

This is without even taking into account that each of that network of 2,832,733 people may in turn choose to retweet a message that originates from me to their followers (with any of them choosing to follow me directly). A message could be a link to an article i've written, information I feel is worth sharing, or perhaps a promotional code. Food for thought!

Working in the other direction, I am following 2,145 people. Some of these are friends, some are collegues, but the majority are those who I have determined are sharers or publishers of valuable information, which I can use in my day-to-day role as a marketing specialist. Don't forget that their own networks (and outwards) are also sharing information, which will filter down to me.

Obviously dealing with such a large network of people can be extremely problematical. Without the use of Tweetdeck i'd be lost.

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application that aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter, by taking an abundance of information i.e Twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces. Tweetdeck allows you to group your followers as you see fit.

I have groups within Tweetdeck for 'Friends', 'Collegues', 'Partner Agencies', 'Key Influencers' and so forth, with my virtual filing of people and information constantly evolving.

If you consider the extraordinary potential for reaching an enormous amount of people and apply the steps and ideas I outlined in Using Twitter ... 'The Smart Way' you are well on your way to unlocking the magic of this amazing new information ecosystem, for whatever purpose you see fit.

The next time someone says to you, "Twitter? Isn't that that thing on the Internet where you post about having been for a coffee?!", you can shake your head in condescending bemusement. You know otherwise ;)

Remember - if you want to chat or have questions, just add me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/ramskill

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