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Tim Ferris Twinterview “No Rules” on Twitter
September 21st, 2008
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by Warren Whitlock · Filed Under: Social Media · Twinterviews
Tim Ferriss, best selling author of The Four Hour Work Week has his own system for using Twitter.
Some think he isn’t really using Twitter, Tim explains how valuable Twitter is to him, and the limits he sets for himself to get the results he’s looking for.
Well, I think Timothy missed a couple of really good ways to work twitter into your business.
Sure you can interact in the real world. What if you aren’t ABLE to interact in the real world for some reason? What about the folks you don’t know yet?
Sometimes twitter is a fantastic way to ‘get to know’ someone before you meet them. Especially for people who AREN’T as famous as Timothy Ferriss. Being famous isn’t duplicatable for all persons.
And I like to find information ‘incognito’ because people are more natural when they aren’t feeling monitored. It’s like riding with your kids in the car. They let their inhibitions go more because they don’t think you are paying attention to them. You can hear some really good things you didn’t know before, there – AND on twitter.
Maybe it works for Timothy Ferriss BECAUSE he’s Timothy Ferriss. It doesn’t work for Pam Hoffman though. Maybe someday Pam Hoffman will be as big a name as Timothy Ferriss. I guess I’ll reevaluate my position when that happens…
Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com
p.s. i hear about a lot of Seminars on twitter for my database too!
Warren thanks for getting this video of Timothy Ferriss. I am such a big fan of his book, http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/ This blog just go to prove that he lives what he writes about in his book. He really knows how to limit the overload of “noise” in his world.
I would just love to be one of his close friends, he really honors his time with them. He is living the techniques he talks about in his book. He chooses where he spends his time, as that seems to be one of the things he puts a lot of value on.
Great to hear it come from his own mouth in a video. Warren you are the greatest!!
Kim Burney
Great interview w/ Tim! Agree to a point w/ his assessment, but we here at SiliconPrairieNews have found Twitter to be invaluable in connecting w/ likeminded folks out there we never knew about…
Again, great job and keep in touch!
in a nut shell, people simply use twitter in the ways that serve their business and personality best.
Tim speaks regularly of his separation from life, work, etc and does the same in twitter
I never shut my mouth in the real world, and tend to post a ton on twitter when I start rolling with it!
thanks warren, u da man!
and 5 1/2 minutes of tim ferriss is impressive!!
–z–
Watch out! Intrigued by Tim’s approach, I decided to do the same, with misinterpreted results. People started to unfollow, which made the amount of readers smaller. I don’t recommend doing this! I wrote down the result in a concise blogpost: http://www.joopdorresteijn.com/Archive/a-lesson-about-twitter-spam/
My twitter is http://www.twitter.com/joop
Thanks for this informative video.
I have not really been using twitter that much, but plan on using it a whole lot more in the future.
I like it also because you can see what your peers and mentors are up to.
Like here.
AP
Meeting Tim Ferriss live and in person was one of the HIGHLIGHTS of my weekend at Blog World (oh, aside from meeting YOU, Warren! heeheee)
Though I understand and agree to a certain extent with the “no rules” philosophy, I do believe as a community at large we need to exercise best practices.
Maybe that doesn’t fall under the rules category per se.
But an example might be sharing uber private information like tweeting out something someone said in a DM.
One of my own ‘rules’ is not to share anything online – even in a DM – I wouldn’t want on the front cover of the New York Times. I say the same thing about Facebook. But, that is my choice and I’m not here to enforce my systems on anyone.
Great job nabbing this interview with Tim, Warren. And awesome to get to hang out with you this weekend!
Cheers,
Mari
@marismith
Great video, but where is his Twitter link for those of us that don’t know it?
I gotta admit, I have found Twitter to be 99% useless. But it only takes me one minute to say something pithy each day, and I get a couple of new ‘followers’ (terrible word) each day, and about 10 hits a week to my website from it, so you know, I do it but it is very uninspiring for me. Stumbling your own website takes much less time and generates way, way more traffic.
If anything i can appreciate a person making a decision, backing it with their view sticking to it.
It’s great to see the other side of the Twitter coin. Funny thing is that i went to his twitter page before i came to this post … and my 1st thought was ‘wow – this dude doesn’t follow anyone, that just ain’t right!’
But after i watched the vid i completely respect his position.
—
http://twitter.com/franswaa
Interesting approach Tim uses…
I have to agree with Seamus about “stumbling” being much more effective, but this is still one more tool to get the word out and it takes all of 30 seconds to do a tweet so why not?
My favorite use of Twitter is an adaptation from Tim Ferris’s book. I like to check in with myself and with Twitter about three times per day and ask myself if I’m being productive.
I won’t post on Twitter unless I can post something positive about my progress in my business. This is a great touchstone for me.
No one else may be interested, but it keeps me on track.
I went to his twitter feed first and was initially surprised that he didn’t follow anyone however now I understnad it makes perfect sense.
I’m impressed with his refreshing honesty about not following others, relationships in the real world (which count far more, imho) and also that he doesn’t need yet another inbox.
Mike Ashworth
Small Business Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK
I’m not at all surprised at Tim Ferris’ approach to using Twitter. It’s great that he has the discipline to use Twitter in a manner that suits him and his lifestyle and not get involved with the interactive aspects of the network. He has quite a following already and is a well known name so limited his Twitter use to microblogging will likely not affect his following.
If you’re trying to build a following or are trying to get to the heart of what your target market wants, Twitter is a great tool. But it can also be a time waster much like Facebook and FriendFeed and all the other social networks out there or even email for that matter.
Find a way to make the tools work for you. Find balance. Create your own rules for social network use rather than trying to model one person or another and you’ll be able to create success.
~ Deborah
@deborahcarraro
I’m not really sure why people would get offended if they choose to follow me but I don’t follow them. I guess if that’s a problem, they can “unfollow” me. Like others here have mentioned, I’ve made rules for Twitter that work for me.
The people I choose to follow I either know personally, or are people I can learn from in some way to grow my business. Not everyone who follows me fits in those categories, so there are a lot of people who follow me that I don’t follow.
And there are people I follow who don’t follow me! Tim is one of them. I don’t mind losing followers if they’re just following me so I’ll follow back.
(I hate that term, too. It sounds so pretentious to talk about my “followers.”)
http://twitter.com/LisaBraithwaite
hi, I know twitter can become addictive and it sure was for me at first but I consider using it and the other social networks as MINI BREAKS from my 12 or more hour work days which are mostly spent online AND a great way to connect with other professionals I would not have run across in other mediums of the net.
I agree there should be some *rules* of common sense and decency and as mostly grown ups using it in MY community, we pretty much seem capable of policing ourselves and I adore twitter, all of my Tweet Hearts, and see Mari, Deborah, and Kim, who I follow and follow me, “hi, peeps!”
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jantallent
Your interviews just get better and better, Warren.
Hate to break from the group here, but I think Tim is missing the point of twitter. And, while I respect that everyone uses social media in different ways, Twitter is a community, not a one way interaction. I follow a lot of folks, and have a lot of followers. I can’t read every tweet, and I don’t need to, that is what the reply and dm functions are for…I tune in intermittently to see what’s scrolling by and if I see something of interest, I comment.
I also use @tweetdeck and set up the global search function so I can get a real time stream on topical conversations of interest to me.
I would say that twitter is one of the most effective traffic drivers and community builders in social media. In order to achieve this, though, you have to reach critical mass in numbers and in tweets. In other words, you have to have enough information and enough people aware of it in order to have a big response.
It seems that Twitter has become the new Vegas (without money), simply because it’s easy to become addicted to post-reply, post-reply, etc!
Personally, I use Twitter to develop friends in my niche that I feel I would probably like to JV with or partner in a product.
But, I also follow people who are interesting i.e. MC Hammer.
I have even caught myself on Twitter for more than two hours in my work day and believe me my task list has been upset and lonely!
Balance and prudence I think are important for using any tool, but with Twitter, new and exciting ways are popping up daily, so Tim is right that using Twitter is subjective to your needs not the Twitterverse.
Twitter’s adaptability is it’s best asset, none of us should think there is only one way to use it…
Just make sure you get some real work done… okay?
Anthony
what is twiter?
[...] “the 4 hour workweek man” Tim Ferris so correctly states, use microblogging sites however it suits your needs for there are ‘no [...]
Tim’s book talks about efficiency, productivity, how to get more done in less time.
Twitter is an awesome tool, but if you are unknown, it requires time to build and develop your network. And Twitter can quickly turn into another time absorbing waste of time like all the other social networking sites. You have to learn to keep them all in check, or it will ruin your productivity.
I am still learning how I can use it for my own business, and the greatest potential I see is the ability to search across all twitter users, and interact with them in real time. They may be potential customers, or just people with similar interests. Definitely great potential.