The Future Place Blog

Using Twitter to Filter your Information Flow

Many non-users of Twitter say that one of the reasons they don’t use it is because they do not have the time. But, used properly Twitter can reduce the time you spend watching the news, reading newspapers/magazines/journals, and following blogs and news feeds.

The principle to using Twiter to reduce the time you spend sifting through media is to use it as a filter to the world. If you follow the right people and hash tags, anything that is worth reading is going to appear in the stream of tweets you follow, and the more important it is, the more often it will appear. The corollary being that if it wasn’t tweeted/retweeted then it was not really interesting/useful.

The key to using Twitter this way is to use a tool such as TweetDeck to follow different leads, for example key people, key hashtags, and key topics. I follow about 10 streams via TweetDeck and I probably look at TweetDeck for about 5 minutes every hour (every working/waking hour) which keeps me in touch with 90% of what I need to know. I have TweetDeck on my main pc, my netbook, and my iPhone so it is always there if I want it.

Last Friday I saw a presentation from Will Goodhand from BrainJuicer about their Digividuals project, and interestingly they were using Twitter as the ‘dashbord’ for their bots to report their findings. This is another  indication that Twitter (or something like it) could be the information filter of the future.

This method of using Twitter to reduce the effort required to stay on top of things is part of a project we are looking at called the Efficient Exec.

The Efficient Exec Webinar

One of our current projects is looking at how to unlock the benefits of social media for the Efficient Exec, a busy person who does not wish to become a social media fan. You can read a post about it HERE and below you can see the video of our first webinar on the topic (it is so beta the project was still called Busy Exec’s Guide – before we found that the name was already in use) - note the video is about 48 minutes long.

For those of you attending the MRSS Conference in Singapore you will be able to see the latest version of the material on the Efficient Exec presented by Sue York as part of her half-day workshop on social media.

What are your thoughts and suggestions on the Effective Exec project?

 

Changing from the tank to the stream, and why Twitter is so important

Over the last couple of days Sue York and I have been focusing on how to make social media accessible to more people, especially busy execs (trying to help them become ‘Efficient Execs’ in the context of their social media usage).

As part of that process we have been exploring the sorts of things that make people who are not social media fans uncomfortable. Some of the findings are pretty straightforward, ‘I don’t want to share that much stuff’, ‘I don’t want to know that sort of stuff’, ‘I don’t have the time for all that stuff’, and some were more surprising (at least for us), such as somebody who said they ‘hated serendipity’, by which they meant they liked their findings to be predictable and their world to be ordered. This particular comment led me to think about of the big paradigm shifts that social media (indeed the web) is imposing, a shift from organised collections of information (which I have likened to a tank) to a stream of information (given the terrible floods and worse happening I have avoided using a metaphor stronger than stream).

In the ‘tank’ world we tended to try to deal with everything and we would catch up on things. For example, if you went on holiday you would typically try to read all your mail and email on your return to catch up with communications, you may look at the main magazines you missed whilst you were away (e.g. The Economist) but you probably tried to follow the new whilst you were away. Your colleagues will brief you on projects so you can resume your involvement and input.

The classic metaphor for the ‘tank’ method was the ‘do list’. Items went on the do list and stayed there until they were processed.

With the amounts of information now being produced, especially via the Web, and in particular in social media, nobody is every going to catch up, nobody will be able to read everything that they ought to read, our metaphorical do lists run the risk of simply growing and growing. The new way is to move away from the paradigm of the tank to that of the stream. A stream may look the same from one day to another, but it is always new water, if you see a twig floating down the stream you see it, but if you look away and miss it, then you can’t look for it later. Whilst some things will stay ‘tank’ items, such as remembering your partner’s birthday, paying your taxes, etc, a growing number of things, and social media in particular need to model themselves on the stream.

People who are really at home with social media use Twitter to control their stream of information. People who are not comfortable find that Twitter is adding the uncontrollable flow of information. The key difference between the two is the adoption of the stream mentality.

Using Twitter to filter information is based on following people who tend to find/say/create relevant things, using hashtags that identify useful things, and then monitoring the flow of the stream via a tool like TweetDeck. The person comfortable with social media will not worry about what they missed whilst they were asleep, or out at a meeting, or even busy working on a presentation, they will assume that anything important will be re-tweeted. If it was in the stream and it was not re-tweeted by lots of people, then it might have been interesting, but it was probably not important to you.

Once the Efficient Exec lets go of the idea that they can monitor everything, they will find they can use Twitter to highlight key things. Australian researcher, Peter Harris, gave a great example of how to use Twitter when he said that one of the times he looked at TweetDeck was first thing in the morning and that he tended to look for two or three interesting things, not trying to get everything, just dipping into the stream.

I find that I look at TweetDeck about 5 minutes every hour to keep on top of things, which means I am probably spending an hour a day on information and communication – but that is my job, others should be able to manage on less, perhaps checking your app (be it TweetDeck, HootSuite or whatever even just twice a day).

One of the big differences with the steam and the tank is what you do after a break, such as a two-week holiday. With the tank approach people try to catch-up, ploughing through their over-loaded in-boxes. The steam way would be to ignore that and start looking at the stream when you return – perhaps even setting your out of office to say something like “I am out of the office for two weeks and my inbox is closed. If it is urgent contact XXX. If it is for my attention, you will need to send it to me after my return.”

Once you are following the right people and hashtags it is probably fair to say that if a particular news story or topic did not get re-tweeted it did not matter.

 

What is the Efficient Exec?

The Efficient Exec is a collaborative project to help busy execs get the benefits they want from social media without having to become a social media junkie, indeed without even having to like social media very much. The project is being headed by Ray Poynter and The Future Place, but it hopes to draw on other people’s talents and experiences.

The kick-off event is a webinar by Ray Poynter and Sue York titled the Busy Exec’s Guide to Social media and you can still sign-up to that webinar if you are quick HERE (it is at 10am London time, 30 March). If you miss the webinar then we are hoping to post a recording later.

The three planks of the Efficient Exec approach to social media are to focus on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but even that can be daunting if you are not already comfortable with the way these three work, and if you do not understand how they can help you in your work life.

Facebook
Facebook is probably the least useful of the three social media platforms we are focusing on, but it is also one of the most important. No exec could afford to never watch TV, never read a newspaper/watch the news, and similarly no exec can afford not to understand the basics of Facebook, at the very least you need to know what people are saying about you, what your staff are using, and if you have children you will want to know what they know.

One of the key issues that we have uncovered so far is that many people are unsure about the difference between profile, a page, and a group. So there is now an Efficient Exec Page to ”Like”, an Efficient Exec Group to ”Join”, and you can become “Friends” with the Efficient Exec.

Twitter
Twitter can become the busy exec’s key source of new news, but only if you keep it under control. You can check out the Efficient Exec on Twitter to get suggestions for efficient social media strategies.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn has three benefits, to build a CV, to find out about other people/companies, and to find a group to discuss ideas. There is an Efficient Exec group on LinkedIn and you are welcome to join.