…with the Twitters. If you don’t know what that means you aren’t going to be able to trick me into defining it so don’t even try.
There is some background to this and it comes from history. Fairly recent history in the grand scheme of things but many moons ago in my personal chronology.
When I was 16 and finished high school instead of doing ‘A’ Levels I went to an Art College and did a vocational qualification in Media. I wanted to be a journalist as I had enjoyed writing at school. This course offered intros to journalism, radio, photography and video so seemed like a perfect mix. In doing the course I got a real taste for video making, especially editing and went on to do an undergrad degree in Media and Communication.
What’s that got to do with anything? I’ll tell you laddy buck (feet off the seats please). 6 years of studying Media drummed some core concepts into my brain. The relevant one in this case is audience and audience reception. When creating any piece of media you have to consider who you are aiming it at. Who is your audience. I believe this heavily informs the way you create your content. You wouldn’t write a journalistic piece without some idea of who the intended publisher (and thus intended audience) is. When making videos as part of our written work we had to state which TV channel or what output purpose the piece was aimed at.
What does this have to do with Twitter? Oh just exactly everything. I have no idea who I am tweeting to or who I am tweeting as. You could probably analyse my history of tweets and see me struggling with the concept of audience. There was a patch of time where I used it as a semi-pro part time photographer, a brief period where I incorporated the stuff I was doing with editing/media technology, and some time where I just put personal stuff up.
Why do I struggle so much with Twitter? I happily use Facebook status updates and I share photos and blog links on there. I know who my potential audience on Facebook is. It’s my ‘friends’ (in the social media sense not real life chums necessarily). My Facebook friends are made up of family and friends back in the UK who want to hear about how I am going in Australia, work colleagues, people interested in my photography etc… Basically a group or AUDIENCE I understand.
My content via Facebook is varied and changeable and ultimately rewarding because different audience members at different times respond. A key part of this is that I am also part of the audience. The roles constantly changing from content creator to consumer to commenter. Get a good mix of this and you have interesting and dynamic communication going on. Some people lean toward one role or another, some people may never post photos they have taken, some people just do status updates, some people aggregate interesting links etc…
Why can’t I use Twitter like this? I can share photo’s, post links, join conversations just like Facebook. I’ve tried and I don’t feel like I am getting anything back. Twitter always feels like I am standing on the edge of something. It seems more time based than Facebook. Like I could get up in Australia and have missed everything that happen in the UK over night.
I don’t have many followers on there and when I do post a picture or blog link or something I get nothing back. I don’t really know who my audience is so I can’t just stand there shouting into the void hoping someone will listen. I was quite eager to use twitter as a way to communicate some photographers of note in the US who use it but every time I have tried to engage with them it seems like my voice has been drowned in the thousands of other people all shouting in their direction.
I have begun to see that you can be a passive twitter user in that you can use it as a live ‘news wire’ to follow trending topics and discussions on things that are going on. You could even, if you think you have the audience, become an aggregator or re-tweeter passing things you have followed to your own network thus spreading the information. I think I can use it like this and I need to have a look at who I follow and how I use things like the search tool to follow discussions but it is going to take me a while to find an audience and to feel like I can tweet myself.
For some reason I am not happy with the idea of audience-less communication. This blog has a very tiny audience of people I know and I am fine with that. I think it may be an audience of about 5 people some of who occasionally comment but in this context that is enough. If the people who follow me on Twitter engaged with me more I may feel the compulsion to use it more.
Massive apologies for accidental switchy to speaky normal for nearly an entire post. Very hard for me to word-type thinky things in nutbarTalk.
4 Comments
There’s probably more than 5 you know
..until you remember that all audiences are both projected and imaginary.
In other media, you have to fit into a context. If you talk on a radio
station, not only are there cues and clues as to who your audience is
(like the playlist, for instance), you’ve got the added help of ‘who
is everyone else talking to?’ – but the point is that you still choose
an imagined audience, pitch to them, and hopefully, that’s who will
turn up.
Your problem is that you’re waiting for those social cues, when they
never mattered in any other medium. The point is to find a voice (any
voice), pick up an audience, and use whatever feedback you get to do
minor course correction.
I volunteer to be your imaginary audience. Talk to me. And then people
like me will turn up. If you can deal with that – get started. Be
interesting. Entertain me!
Kate – I said 5 as an exaggeration of the two people I think actually read this
Dubber – I think I have struggled to find a voice that I feel comfortable with. Being a photographer on Twitter didn’t work for me, nor did being the Uni Avid guy. I refuse to duplicate Facebook content so my personal ramblings is a no go.
I may just observe a bit longer and try regular changes of who I follow and what I search for until my imagination thinks up a good audience.
Great post James. I wholeheartedly concur and feel that with a blog you are able to communicate with a degree of depth and consequence not practical through twitter. Blogs can exist as a unique medium for comment by talented and experienced writers across innumerable fields. What does twitter offer its audience? From my experience it demonstrates its immaturity in the endless stream of blow by blow accounts of peoples days, inconsequential and irrelevant to my own.
Granted there are many many blogs of the same nature. I just feel that, being a vastly more flexible medium, blogs provide a greater scope for intelligent articles and discussion.