It’s been an exciting few weeks in Newcastle – 90% of the time we’ve had relatively positive weather (my fair skin managed to catch the sun with the slightly increased temperatures), yet we’ve also had some pretty ‘unorthodox’ weather impacting on the metro system, roads, and businesses in a variety of ways (thankfully, Carrot Media have thus far managed to avoid some of these pitfalls).
Coupled with the ever-changing weather (which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise – we’re used to it, right?) we’ve enjoyed being a host city for the London Olympic Games. Justin and I (in separate groups) were fortunate enough to attend the quarter-final last weekend.
How do you communicate your thoughts on these major (and even minor) events? Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday last month and, within that time, this multi-channel communication system has extrapolated… We’re now able to connect directly with a variety of individuals to gain an insight into the day-to-day happenings in their life. I’m (shamefully) one of the 28,106,741 followers of Lady Gaga (the most followed Twitter user). That figure dwarfs the 18,359,352 of the most powerful man in the world (@BarackObama) and the 45 of the most powerful man in the north east (@davidwpeck).
Of course, the strength of your Twitter account shouldn’t just be measured based upon your number of followers – the question is how do you manipulate Twitter to your advantage? During the football match last Saturday (much to the chagrin of my fellow attendee) I spent a large proportion of the game tweeting my thoughts, using the hash tag #London2012 – automatically entering into a conversation with fellow attendees and those watching around the world! Likewise, with the recent floods, Twitter was an integral source of information, with regular updates provided by local news agencies and transport networks via their Twitter feeds.
Over the next few weeks I will discuss (in much greater detail) the do’s and don’ts of operating a Twitter account; what my favourite campaigns are and a look at how Twitter has been used during the London Olympics 2012.
If you haven’t already, check out Justin Turner’s (@JTatCarrot) look at how to open a Twitter account – found here.
Until next time
David (@davidwpeck)