Twitter -- What do you read at breakfast?

I've had several colleages ask me lately, "how do you use Twitter for your selling activities?"

Twitter is becomming a primary resource for me for listening, learning and research.

Listening

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”-- Clay Shirky

Using Twitter to listen to topic specific conversations is a skill we really need to develop. I don't have time to listen to everything. By selecting and cultivating people who share my interests, I leverage their research, insights, ideas and conversations.

I pick up themes, topics and keywords that help me further my listening, but in an efficient way.

Learning

The people I follow regularly tweet and post links to articles, reference sources and tools that provide an efficient way to learn new ideas. I've developed the habit of replacing my morning newspaper with Twitter. Using Hootsuite, or even on my Blackberry with Ubertwitter,I'm able to categorize the primary topics I'm interested in learning about. Using #hastags and Twittersearch I'm able to quickly retrieve conversations and their related links.

Research

Before working on a specific account, I search Twitter to find conversations about the company,their news and events, topics of issues and competitive landscape. Often this as uncovered new people I need to contact but who were not readily available to me. Contacting these people through Twiter has prove a much more effective technique than phone or email.

If I find people at the company who work in functions that are relevan to me, and they are on Twitter, I follow them. It's a great first step, and the next best thing, to being in direct relationship. How else can you "listen in" to what they are thinking and saying.

My Process

At breakfast, I open Ubertwitter on my Blackberry and start to review my tweets. I typically keep the application open so the app has been accumulating tweets long before I long on. As I find tweets that interest me or people in my organization, especially those with links to great resources, I simply email the tweet to myself or my colleagues.

When I have time I can review, print, or post those tweets to our wiki. I can access the resources referenced. It's a fast, easy and interesting way to expand my listening, learning and research. I'm addicted.