Twitter as a Form ...

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When it comes to social media – and specifically Twitter – the quest for engagement is right up there with weight loss and the Holy Grail.

Engagement offers proof that people are paying attention, no easy task in a world where a greener pasture is always just a click away.

Yet, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that one of the greatest benefits derived from Twitter comes from a form of crowdsourcing. Most of us are lucky if we can devote 60 minutes each day to “discovery,” identifying  news, insights and tools that help us become smarter in our jobs. The sobering reality is that this 60 minutes of discovery filters only a minuscule fraction of the relevant stuff raining down on us.

Yet, with the right management of Twitter, you essentially gain a team of brilliant individuals curating content for you.

Let’s say you’re tracking 10 people – “tracking” meaning you actually read their Twitter feeds from top to bottom – who put an hour into discovery each day as well as capture content from another hour spread across the natural flow of each work day.  Now, you’re benefiting from 20 hours of discovery.

Benefits of tracking individuals on Twitter for crowdsourcing

Quick example from earlier in the month –

One of the folks I track pointed me to a HubSpot post, “The Anatomy of a Highly Shareable Infographic” where I learned about a new tool called Thinglink that makes it possible to embed links in an infographic.  We’ve been looking for a way to embed hyperlinks in JPEGs for years. While not exactly the same thing, we’ve already kicked off an experiment with Thinglink.

Of course, the key to Twitter crowdsourcing lies in tracking the right individuals. As far as defining what constitutes “the right individuals,” I’m not just looking for relevance. What makes these folks so valuable is their ability to uncover information that isn’t widely tweeted in your circles and otherwise would have been missed.

On Wednesday, I’ll share five individuals who meet this criteria and can give you a running start with Twitter crowdsourcing.

 


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