When over 150 geeks gathered at Buzz 140, the recent Twitter Unconference conducted by the Knowledge Foundation in Chennai, they didn\u2019t realise that the largest gathering of Twitter folk in India had the same concerns.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One:\u00a0<\/strong>Twitterbugs had eaten into their blog statistics.<\/p>\n Not only did the frequency of updating their blog come down after taking to Twitter, the number of hits on their blog too took a hit.<\/p>\n \u201cTraffic has gone down by about 50 per cent,\u201d says Kiruba (@Kiruba on Twitter), one of India\u2019s most-known bloggers and one of the early birds who took to Twitter in the country. \u201cBecause by the time it takes you to make one post, you would\u2019ve already updated your status five times.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Two:\u00a0<\/strong>Men seem to be doing it more.<\/p>\n India today has about 6.5 lakh unique Twitter users. According to a study by ViziSense, nearly four out of five Twitter users in India are male. Hence, it was no surprise that hardly 15 per cent of the turnout at Buzz 140 was female.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe women find 140 characters too little to express what they are up to,\u201d laughs Kausikram (@Kausikram on Twitter) \u201cOr maybe they haven\u2019t embraced technology yet,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n A study conducted by Harvard Business School recently observed that around the world, women account for 55 per cent of the users. So why are Indian women Twitter-shy?<\/p>\n The same Harvard study may offer an insight. The study notes that women do not like to follow men they do not know and mostly it\u2019s men who end up following men.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Three:\u00a0<\/strong>Social Media could help you build a brand, protect it or ruin it.<\/p>\n As Aishwarya Rao (@AishwaryaRao on Twitter) explains with a presentation: \u201cTwitter is becoming the ideal tool to brand your company, product or for that matter\u2026 yourself. Your conversations and interactions will play a role in branding yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only is social media helping to build a brand but also is being used effectively for preserving brand goodwill. Like the \u201cKiruba incident\u201d as Cleartrip.com refers to the episode.<\/p>\n Due to a combination of factors, Kiruba nearly missed his flight after booking a ticket on Cleartrip and put it up as his Twitter status, forcing the authorities to take notice and explain their side of the story. Cleartrip went on to make amends by upgrading Kiruba and his wife to business class to make up for the confusion.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of corporates haven\u2019t yet learned to use social media effectively,\u201d says Kiruba, adding that posting links alone will not drive traffic to their site. Though users don\u2019t mind being followed, they would never follow promotional accounts.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Four:\u00a0<\/strong>Twitter could get you into trouble.<\/p>\n \u201cDo not bad-mouth your employers or clients on Twitter,\u201d says Kausikram, referring to the Connor episode that cost a guy his job when his future employers found out that Connor had already started talking about going to hate his job even before he could join the company.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Five:\u00a0<\/strong>Do your updates have character?<\/p>\n Your Twitter feed is only as interesting as you are. And vice-versa. Tweeting too many times during the day or rarely posting may discourage followers. Twitter users appreciate brevity. \u201cBuzz 140 had a live Twitter feed projected during the Unconference so that the speaker knew exactly how his presentation was being received,\u201d says Kiruba.<\/p>\n If you have nothing interesting to say, join a discussion by picking a Trending Topic and make sure you hashtag your tweet with the topic chosen.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Six:\u00a0<\/strong>Not everything on Twitter is true.<\/p>\n Though Twitter has been instrumental in empowering the grapevine and facilitating news breaks, not all that you hear from social media is instantly verifiable. Hence, make sure you do not retweet an update if you are unable to verify the news. Especially if it\u2019s sensitive in nature. Just take it with a pinch of salt and wait for confirmation from official channels. Or you might become the boy who cried Wolf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When over 150 geeks gathered at Buzz 140, the recent Twitter Unconference conducted by the Knowledge Foundation in Chennai, they didn\u2019t realise that the largest gathering of Twitter folk in India had the same concerns. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One:\u00a0Twitterbugs had eaten into their blog statistics. Not only did the frequency of updating their blog come down after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}