@DesignSparkRS Twitter has been around for some time now but according to comments and articles on the web, it’s not the chosen social media for engineers. One such engineer commented that he did not want to know when someone was making the tea.
Twitter describes itself as “a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.” – “ Keeps you informed with what matters most to you today and helps you discover what might matter to you tomorrow.”
However Twitter is just a tool – a tool that lets you post a message of up to 140 characters that anyone can read. The content can be anything from saying you’re making the tea, to telling the world you have just released the newest coolest product. So as an engineer I decided some time back to sign up and see what it can do for me.
I have three main interests as follows: Electronics and Design, Motorsport including F1 and MotoGP and lastly TV and Film production. When you have your account you can choice to ‘Follow’ people or businesses. This means that whenever they post something you get to see it on your twitter home page. So from a purely Engineering point of view I follow both major electronics catalogues as well as their online forums (including DesignSpark) as well as some distributors and a microprocessor manufacture. This lets me see articles that are posted and news updates. I can then follow the link inside the ‘tweet’ to a website to find out more. It’s a bit like a RSS feed in this way but is more open to other topics you may be interested in other than just one family of processer for example. I’ve personally found it very usefully at keeping me up to date on new technologies and what is going on and is has had better content than I’d find in a RSS feed or monthly newsletter.
From a personal point of view I have found following my other interests very insightful – for example I follow @TheGadgetShow and in just the last two days I’ve seen pictures of them Paragliding, found out that Ortis ended up in A&E after falling off a bike and that today they are racing around in a miniature Batmobile. This may sound like just fun but for the Gadget Show this is very cleaver marketing that is costing them almost nothing. They are feeding their followers with teasers of what’s to come and unlike a RSS feed or Newsletter they get almost instant feedback from us, the public. Now how many Marketing tools will give you an instant response? And a lot of this can be seen by looking at how many people follow you – showing that they are interested in what you say.
There are lots of ways to tweet, from web pages and mobile devices but I’m not going to go into that here – I’m going to write another blog in a week or so telling you about these tools as well as the ones that keep an eye on your followers.
Do I ‘tweet’? Well yes – I’m a schmuck like everyone else and I respond / reply to posts. I like to post about things I do at work (within the limits of IP etc), as well as tweeting about my bike and basically anything that happens that I think is vaguely interesting. Some of it I know is uninteresting to the majority of my followers (which I only have a few) I’m not a celebrity or a NASA astronaut talking about fitting a coolant hose, but I do get feedback and comments and that inspires me to post interesting stuff – not when I’m making the tea!
So as a engineer you can find out a lot about what happening out in the world of electronics or engineering as a whole – ok it’s not quite as exciting as following Motorcycle racing but that’s just my point of view. As a business this is a tool for getting yourself seen and making your products seen and that’s good for us engineers too. As a ‘tweeter’ I enjoy getting pulled into this social world and like to post about the key events of my day. So I suggest that if you don’t have an account, then sign up and see for yourself what everyone is talking about.
Happy Twittering
@monpjc (aka Paul Clarke)
Related:
Why Don't engineers like Twitter?
Addidis
Not to mention your fav distributor probably has awesome giveaways and contests you can take advantage of.
LStacey
Thanks! So we should do more of that then? :)
LStacey
I still find it quite amusing that the signal to noise ratio is the biggest issue for engineers... Surely engineers understand filters better than most! :)