This is the start of a new series which takes two well known twitterers, gives them 10 quick fire questions to answer (connected to Twitter) and then let’s them battle it out before your votes decide who wins the round.
It’s inspired by Daniel from the awesome DailyBlogTips who created the Bloggers Face-Off back in 2007, i think it’s a hugely interesting and innovative way to gain valuable insights into how and why some of our favourite tweeps use Twitter, rather than resorting to the average interview format.
I’ve picked two of my favourite people on Twitter to kick off the series:
- Calvin Lee: @mayhemstudios – Calvin is a designer and self-proclaimed media ho and twitter addict. He’s been interviewed numerous times regarding twitter, has one of the top twitter backgrounds and is one of the best resources for design links.
- Andy Sowards: @andysowards – Andy is a professional Web Developer, Programmer, family man, and all around advocate of all things tech. Andy is one of the nicest guys on twitter, always happy to have a conversation and shares a wealth of design and web development resources.
Without further ado, let the battle begin…
| 1. How long have you been twittering? |
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Actively, I’ been tweeting for about 6 months. I initially signed up over a year ago but didn’t find it useful until I gave it a second chance. I approached it differently then the first time. Instead of updating on what I was doing, used it for source of inspiration for my design projects and retweeting using info. |
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Since October of 2008. |
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It’s about the people. I like helping others by offering my advice, retweeting useful information and connecting with new friends. It’s also a great way for self-promotion, networking and finding new clients. |
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Many Reasons! I love connecting with like minded designers/developers and meeting new people. I love to share links and resources with people and also helping them get their great content out to everyone with RT’s. Twitter also helps me gain credibility as a designer, developer or programmer and brings in a lot of freelance business and traffic to my sites. It would probably be easier to ask ‘Why DON’T I twitter?’ |
| 3. How many hours do you spend on twitter on a daily basis? |
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I spend about 8 hours or more through out the day on twitter. Maybe that is why they call me a Twitter addict? |
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On average I’d say 2-3 hours a day. |
| 4. If you could only follow one person who would it be? |
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WOW! That is a really tough question to answer. There are so many great people on Twitter. Jeff Fisher comes to mind. He is a great guy, designer and master self-promoter. He’s always willing to give any advice about logo design and self-promotion. Gives back to the design community with great information about his design process and self-promotion tips. |
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I would probably follow Calvin @mayhemstudios. |
| 5. Do you think a well designed profile page is important and why? |
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A well-designed profile page or at least not the default design is a must, even if you’re not promoting anything. It will help to express your personality. People will find you more interesting, want to get to know you better and follow you. |
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I do, because people with well designed profile pages are taking twitter seriously and trying to get their brand in front of you. |
| 6. What is the best way to gain and keep followers? |
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Gaining and keeping followers isn’t that important to me. You will always have people that won’t like how you use Twitter. My best advice, Twitter is what you make it. I try to help others out by participating, interacting, tweeting using information, retweeting others, being part of the community, replying to questions, sharing part of my life and being nice. That’s how I gain and keep followers. |
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Be yourself. They will follow you for YOU and they will stay for YOU. |
| 7. What design tips would you give others to improve their profile/avatar? |
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Using a photo, as an avatar is more personable, people relate to you better as real person, opposed to a graphic or illustration. Your profile description should be something about you or what you do. Make it fun. Your Twitter background should to be attractive, clean and unobtrusive. Keep away from making the background too busy. You don’t want people to be distracted by the background when reading your profile, updates or favorites. There should also be a good contrast between the background and fore ground of the tweet content area for easy readability. |
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For Avatars, use a pic of yourself, or use your logo or brand as the avatar, or use both(be creative). For Profiles, definitely use your logos/branding here, and list your sites and any contact/social media urls so twitterers can connect with you there too. |
| 8. If you could become any other person on twitter for a day who would it be? |
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It would have to be either Guy Kawasaki or Chris Brogan. It would be cool to travel around the country meeting everyone from Twitter and speaking about your experiences. It would be like not working at all. |
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Would definitely be @aplusk with all those followers that would just be interesting to see. |
| 9. What impact has Twitter had on your career? |
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Twitter is an awesome tool for networking, self-promotion and finding new clients. It has given me more opportunities to get my name out there, than anything else I have used before. People contacting me for projects have doubled and my website/blog traffic has increased significantly. I get a lot of referrals from other followers as well. I also get asked to contribute to articles and interviews, which helps in building my credibility as design professional. |
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It has greatly impacted my career, it has given me the opportunity to network with excellent designers and put my work in front of a lot of people that otherwise may not have seen it. In turn this has helped me grow my freelance business drastically! |
| 10. What is the secret of success on twitter, expressed in one word? |
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There is no secret; it’s combination of things. It’s about being you. If I had to say just one, it would be Helpful. Here are a few other words I would use too: engaging, retweet, content, nice. |
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Kindness. |
Voting will automatically close in exactly one day – Friday at 1pm, so get voting now! The Twitter Face-Off will be twice monthly on a Thursday so make sure to check back on July 2.
[polldaddy poll="1705300"]
Related posts:
- Twitter Face-Off: Cheth vs Richard Darell
- Twitter Face-Off: Kris Colvin vs Misty Belardo
- Popular Design Bloggers Reveal Their Secrets
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Thx for the kind words!
I’ve followed both Calvin and Andy for a long time and love both of them so this was a hard choice for me.
I’ve probably checked out more of Calvin’s helpful posted links but I’ve seen Andy helping more people.
Best advice, follow both of them if you don’t already.