Twitter & TweetDeck

[00:00:00]
>> Paul DeBettignies: I wanna tell you about Twitter really fast. In the tech space, a lot of developers, all the cool kids, the thought leaders, the people putting out really cool stuff are on Twitter. If you're not on Twitter, go get an account. I rarely use absolute terms and phrases on things.

[00:00:15]
You have to do this, you shouldn't do that. I highly recommend you get a Twitter account if only to absorb information. If nothing else, just for that. So I use a tool called TweetDeck, most people are using Hootsuite. I'm a bit old school sometimes. But I have been, for the last 12 days, monitoring the Frontend Masters Twitter account.

[00:00:38]
So I've been watching what you all have been tweeting or what others have been tweeting online. So for those of you who have been watching the boot camp online, and you've been sending messages, I've been creeping and watching. If you wanna find a way to build a network on Twitter, if I were you and I will for the most part, I will go through and anyone who has tweeted in the last two weeks about Frontend Masters, I will start following them.

[00:01:02]
Some of them are gonna follow me back, some of them won't follow me back and I'm eh, their loss. But I'm gonna keep following them anyway. Some people will say, if you don't follow me back then I'm gonna stop following you and I'm like, we're not in fourth grade any more, right?

[00:01:14]
But this is a way to develop a network. So if you're on Twitter, and you don't follow Jen Kramer who was in here last week, you're kind of silly. Like follow her, figure out what she's talking about now that she's gone home, what is she teaching in her classroom, what are the cool articles that she thinks are important?

[00:01:30]
You don't have to tweet a damn thing, although it's weird that you don't, but absorb stuff. So why I use Twitter, I don't do it like I used to, I'm not as active as I was. On the far right-hand corner, I have a constant search for, we had Twin Cities Startup Week here, in Minneapolis three or four weeks ago.

[00:01:48]
I'm still following the hashtags from that event. I am also following, I should probably show this so you can get an idea, so if you're using this tool, these are the searches I'm always doing. So the first year for Twin Cities Startup Week, MN tech is just something we've been using here in Minneapolis for a couple of years now, a number of us.

[00:02:05]
Mini Demo or Mini Bar, those are events that go on here in our town. And then Mini Star, which is the group that runs those two events. So I'm constantly, that's not true, I'm not constantly. This is, so I follow, I don't know 10,000 some folks on Twitter.

[00:02:21]
And so on the left hand side of the screen, right? That's spitting out probably 15 tweets every 2 seconds. There's no way I can absorb that much information, nor would I want to, who cares? So I create lists of people I'm following on Twitter. So all stars, Mark is indeed there by the way.

[00:02:44]
It's just people of Minnesota, I've got a couple of lists for recruiter and HR folks. So again, you're gonna wanna start following companies on Twitter. Their company page, also the CTO, cuz you saw him or her on LinkedIn, you see they've got a Twitter account, now you gonna follow the Twitter account.

[00:03:03]
I'm getting ready to do a job search, I'm trying to build a network, this is what I would be doing if I were you. This is usually running on my laptop, and I probably don't look at it 15 minutes a day. I probably should be spending more time than I have.

[00:03:18]
Right, I have a tech news, so I don't have to go to TechCrunch, I don't have to go to any of those sites. I'm just catching their articles as they're posting them on Twitter, cuz they all do, okay? VCs and angels for obvious reasons, for me in the startup space, I wanna know what they're talking about.

[00:03:31]
This list for me is like your list of CTOs or recruiters. I'm trying to make friends with the VCs and the angels, both in the Midwest and across the US, because I wanna know the next time they invest in a company here. I want them to think about hiring me to help their group for the first six months.

[00:03:48]
So I am you. I'm literally you in this scenario, okay? And then, I took them out just for this because it got so long, but I also then monitor all of my company clients' Twitter accounts too. I just absorb information as I can. Ten years ago, I was watching this all day every day and sometimes it didn't get work done cuz I could get absorbed in it.