Thursday, November 18, 2010

Are your missing out on Twitter feedback?

Last weekend I delivered a keynote on "Secrets from Canada's Top Entrepreneurs" to 200 student delegates at the Impact 2010 conference in Toronto. Little did I know that some members of the audience were Tweeting portions of my speech.

The cool thing about Twitter is that when people tweet about a topic, issue, person or place, they can place a hashtag (#) in front of the name and suddenly turn it into a trending topic for others to follow. Or if they put the "@" sign (not the asterisk, sorry about that mistake) in front of a person's Twitter name, that person (or anyone else) can follow that part of the conversation easily, because it will show up in a feed to that person or anyone else who wishes to follow it.

So today I discovered some of the things people Tweeted about me. Since you rarely get detailed feedback on specific parts of a speech, this is an interesting way to see what resonates with people - eg, local references, or an insight someone finds particularly useful.

Here's what people said about me on Saturday afternoon:

1. KLinked: @RickSpence definetely lived up to expectations! Great job selecting speakers #INC10 @GoDevMENTAL 4:40 PM Nov 13th

2. u_christine: When asked what is the major problem for young entrepreneurs today, @rickspence answers, "you don't have problems." We r at a huge advantage 4:25 PM Nov 13th

3. jadechoyy: @rickspence interesting and informative keynote about canadian entrpreneurs! #inc10 4:18 PM Nov 13th

4. DamiDina: "Become someone worth talking about." Inspirational and Great quote by speaker @rickspence at #INC10. 4:18 PM Nov 13th

5. lu_christine: So awesome to finally hear @rickspence speak! Thx for coming to share such inspiring stories #INC10 http://twitpic.com/36kkcx 4:14 PM Nov 13th
6. summers_megan : @rickspence just mentioned the ottawa valley! aww yeah! #inc10 @impactorg 3:52 PM Nov 13th

What are people saying about you? Get a user account on Twitter and find out!

4 comments:

Christine Lu said...

Thanks Rick again for coming to INC and sharing your stories! Great to see that you mentioned the conference on your blog. You made our conference that much more special.

Cheers,
Christine Lu
Impact Ontario President

Recruiting Animal said...

I didn't understand the part about the asterisk and I'm an active user of Twitter. Couldn't find anything about it on Google either.

Rick Spence said...

Oops, my mistake. I meant the "@" sign, not the asterisk. Sorry about that. I have fixed the original post.
Thanks for pointing this out, RA.

Recruiting Animal said...

Rick, sorry if I seem pedantic about this but it's pretty simple.

If everyone participating in a specific conversation on Twitter puts the number sign in front of an agreed-upon keyword you will be able to search that keyword on Twitter Search (or some other tool) and pull up all of the postings about that topic.

If you put the @ sign in front of a name it simply makes that name into a hyperlink so you can click through to that person's Twitter page and she will find it in her Reply list. (Replies are called Mentions in the new Twitter format).