Want to subscribe to my RSS feed? Just click on the link. Also, check out the SITEMAP as an easy way to see what all is here!

Want to do something to help the earth? Try Twitter! It’s a social networking website which anyone can join for free, and many thousands of people and businesses have. You can find people who share your interests and communicate with them via 140-character posts. You wouldn’t think you could say much in a tweet, as these posts are called, but you really can, by shortening urls and writing succinctly.

Still, I was on Twitter for over a year, just tweeting now and then, before I realized its power.  I just used it casually, in connection with my interest in dog training. But recently I decided to see if it could help me do more in greening the earth.  I have found many other people on Twitter who share this interest. They comment and pass along links to informative websites; I didn’t sleep well after reading too many of those articles late one evening, but overall I am greatly encouraged to connect with so many people around the world who care and think about what’s going on with our planet. For example, here’s a story about how twitter beat the mainstream media on an environmental disaster in Tennessee.

How to Use Twitter: Get Your Account and Fill Out Your Settings

Go to www.twitter.com and sign up for a free account. You will need to choose a username. Since Twitter allows multiple accounts, you may want to choose a name that reflects a specific interest. I was already trainingdogs but wanted a new name, to keep the activity separate for my two interests. The name of this website, simplegreenliving.com, turned out to be a few characters too long even without the dot com, so I opted for simplegreenlife.

Your homepage at twitter will become twitter.com/ followed by your new username. Go there and watch the tweets scrolling down. Someone will be describing their lunch, someone else using cryptic abbreviations, someone else ranting, somebody asking advice, and others posting funny-looking links to websites. Don’t expect it to make much sense just yet.

Once you’ve done that, go to your settings page and put in your name. I used my real name but if you are not comfortable doing so, then don’t. Whatever you put will be publicly viewable. If you have a website, there is a place to put it and this will get you some traffic. There is also a link to a page that tells how you can put your twitter activity into your website.

Next there is a place for a one-line bio which can be up to 160 characters in length. This turns out to be more important than you might think, as other people will decide to follow you partly based on what you say here. After a feeble start, I ended up saying: Resources, reviews, reflections on simple green living: dwellings, food, gardening, health, transport, community, etc., from old hippie librarian. You can change this later.

Do upload a picture or an image. Nothing screams “Newbie!” louder than the default image twitter puts in. I used a photo of myself because I think it helps me stand out as a specific person in the fast-moving pace on Twitter, but I also notice that some logos stand out too.

Now go ahead and post a few tweets. Make them interesting and useful, as some people will check out your activity to decide whether to follow you.

Find People to Follow

I suggest you head for the twitter search page. Once there, search for a word or phrase that interests you. If it’s a phrase, put it in quotes. Even using the word green will get you started, though you’ll be seeing tweets about green tea or green apples too.

Some of the tweets will interest you. Right-click on the usernames next to the images, and open several in new tabs. Then take a look at their pages. (You can get ideas for your own page background, discussed later, from theirs.) You can read several of their recent tweets. If you decide you would like to follow them, click on Follow in the little gray box.

Notice in the upper right area of the screen, for each profile you’ll see the number of people they are following, the number of people that are following them, and how many updates (tweets) they have posted. Here’s an example that came up when I searched green on the twitter search page: http://twitter.com/greenbiztweets had at that time over 1700 others that he was following, almost as many followers, and over 900 updates. So that’s a very active profile, and thus a great way for you to find a lot of people to follow right away. Click on either following or followers, and a page will load showing the usernames and images. If you hold your cursor over the usernames, you will see the bios and you can decide whether or not you want to follow the person or business; you can also go to their twitter page. So click away, and soon you will be following a bunch of people. I hope you’ll  follow me: http://twitter.com/simplegreenlife

I suggest you just do a couple dozen or so now, and then make this an ongoing activity. The reason to do just a few now is that many people will follow you back when you follow them, and they will be more likely to follow you if you seem interesting.

Using Twhirl or Tweetdeck

You can do all your twitter activity from your twitter webpage, but there are other options. There is at least one Firefox plugin that I haven’t tried. Twhirl and Tweetdeck are free programs you can download to do your twitter activity from. I use them both at present. I started with Twhirl for my dog training interest, and just recently began using Tweetdeck. I like it MUCH better, but since it only can handle one account at present, I have continued to use Twhirl for dogs and use Tweetdeck for my green activities.

I like Tweetdeck best for two reasons: It can take up the whole screen so you can see more action at one time – direct messages and replies can each have their own column –and you can create groups. I’ve got one called TOP PICKS, where I put the people I want to follow closely. This one feature is great because I can follow lots of people and yet really watch certain ones closely. The potential to get overwhelmed, or to fritter too much time twittering, can be managed this way. I routinely skim the column with all the people I am following and add the most useful ones to my top picks group.

Some Power User Tools

There are many, many websites that offer useful features to add to twitter. Here are a few that I use:

http://cli.gs is great for creating short urls AND for tracking them in real time. For example, I can see that 16 people clicked on a tweet I did yesterday, where my husband blogged about a global warming video he’d seen online. The stats turn up almost immediately, unlike some other sites of this sort.

http://socialtoo.com/ will save a lot of time because it will automatically have you follow anyone who follows you, and if you wish you can send them a direct message automatically. I had read that some people consider this spammy, but lots of people in the green field do it and I do too. My message thanks them for following me and invites them to come see www.simplegreenliving.com — I am quite willing to follow anyone who follows me because of the way I am using Tweetdeck to pick out the ones that I really watch closely.

There are a variety of ways to have your blog posts automatically turned into tweets. Be aware that if this is all you do, people may well consider you a spammer. You need to take part in the community discussions to have a genuine presence. I’m not doing this now, but plan to when I travel… since I blog on Wordpress, I can set up my blog posts for future dates and have them automatically tweet. I am waiting for a plugin that you can use with cli.gs because I like their tracking so much: http://www.joedolson.com/articles/wp-to-twitter/ can be used now and he’s currently working on how to get it to do future-dated blog posts.

http://twitpic.com allows you to post pictures into twitter. You can use Twitpic from within Tweetdeck. Looked to me like any pictures you posted would be available for others to put on their sites with some code at Twitpic.

A useful way to find more people to follow and be followed by is at www.mrtweet.net – or just follow him at http://twitter.com/MrTweet and he will send you an email.

You can customize your page background via the settings, and you can do a custom background if you wish. I got a free one at www.tweetbacks.com and added images and text in Photoshop Elements. I don’t think this is necessary, but it’s a professional touch and another way to make yourself accessibly. People put their contact data on the screen this way frequently.

Be sure to make Twitter a regular part of your daily activities, as there are so many ways that it can help you become more active environmentally. You’ll be able to keep up with any aspect of green living that interests you by choosing the people you follow. You can be inspired by what some of them are doing. You can find blogs to read, green product information, and more.

Do also make time to make changes in how you use resources, or none of the knowledge will affect our earth… I believe that humanity is in for some rough times ecologically (they have already started, no doubt you have noticed), and that whatever each of us does to live more simply can make a difference in how severe the changes are. – Zana Hart, simplegreenliving.com

Feel Free to Use this Blog Post

If you would like to use this blog post on your own blog or website, you are welcome to cut and paste the whole thing, provided you keep it intact and the links live. It’s fine if you don’t use this box.

3 Responses to “How to Use Twitter for Greening the Earth”