Work at Home Grandmothers

The latest Twitter statistics are out, and even though I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Twitter this week due to outages caused by the hacker that shut down Twitter for a day or two, it’s still one of my favorite ways to network. 

I thought I’d share some of statistics with you, and a thought or two on how they might affect your business communications on Twitter…now realize the study was done over a 10 day period…and I hope not within the past week - just kidding

1. 40% of tweets are pointless statements of fact, stating what the person happened to be doing at the moment, like “I’m eating a cookie”, “I’m watching television” etc.
2. 39% were conversational tweets, and take place between 2 - 4 pm…what time zone I don’t know, but the report I heard was on the east coast.
3. % of Spam and self-promotion is quite low
4. News Media tweets peeked at about 2 pm Tuesdays
5. Retweets took place most often on Monday mornings

I’m not sure how relevant all of this Twitter trivia is, but knowing when the most conversation is taking place was surprising to me.  I tend to spend my time on Twitter in the evenings, perhaps it would be better to visit during the afternoon hours when there is conversation going on.

One thing I know for sure is that if you want to promote your business, you have to first take time to share yourself, and I mean sincerely, not just to get, people will see right through that.  

A mistake I made early on was to set up my blogs with “Twitterfeed” so that each post to my blogs was automatically posted to Twitter…and I never conversed at all…definitely wasn’t a good idea, any more than blasting out phrases like ”Made $1000 in my first week” etc…posts like that may bring in some, but don’t appeal to me at all.  I still use Twitterfeed, but spend a good bit of time conversing, too, and only have Twitterfeed tweet my posts every 24 hours.

It is possible to converse in 140 characters…take some time watching conversation,  ”follow” people you enjoy and hope that they will follow you back, you can “tweet” a person that is not “following” you, but you can’t send them a Direct Message.  Jump in and say hi.  Check your “replies” (if you tweet from your Twitter home page, you’ll find your “replies” in the right column where you see your username with a @ in front of it, in my case that would be @happynutrition) and “Direct Messages” regularly and respond…you can reply any time, even if the person who wrote to you isn’t online tweeting at the moment, they’ll see it when they check in again.

Do you have a Twitter business success story to share?  Please share in a comment!

Related Posts:

Networking With Grandmothers on Twitter

Wall Street Journal Article on Twitter

Twittering Grandmothers

Maybe you are a grandmother who is a retired nurse, and like to keep up with the current news in the field because you loved your work.

Maybe you have a daughter or son who is a nurse and might enjoy a site full of wonderful information just for nurses.

Maybe you even have a grandaughter or grandson who is considering the field or in the field, who would be encouraged by the things they will learn at the site I was introduced to today.

The site is appropriately called Scrubs, which I believe is the term for the clothing or uniforms that nurses where when on the job.  As a matter of fact, as the widget on the main page was scrolling through with pictures and associated articles, I found one about a daughter who inspired her mother to become a nurse at the age of 60…it’s a great story as are MANY of the stories at the online magazine…right down to stories about your favorite, or maybe not so favorite, TV-program nurses!

The site has been updated since I last looked at it some time ago for the summer season…with articles about:

• Summer cloths, summer scrubs
• For the female nurses, makeup and beauty
• Tips for night nurses on how to schedule your meals and naps so that you can work at your best

A story I enjoyed was about the featured “nurse of the week”, a gentleman named Kerry Jeanice and his work during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. You can nominate a nurse to be featured.

I am not a nurse, but still enjoyed the site very much, stop by and visit, you’ll find it helpful and inspiring!

We are just a matter of days away from Christmas, and many families will be gathering to celebrate the day. Christmas is a beautiful time, but it can also be a time full of memories that may make you feel a little melancholic.

I have memories from my childhood of my dear Grandmother at Christmas time. My grandparents would come to be with us from the Boston area each year, and spend a few days at least. I remember them sleeping on the fold-out couch in our living room, and running out to the living room to jump on top of Grandpa who never seemed to be upset at us doing that. He was always so patient, and loved to tickle and play with us.

My grandmother usually was up and about by then. A day or two before Christmas we would take out all the good silverware, and the silver salt and pepper shakers that were only used on special occasions and clean them with silver cleaner, then give them a good polishing. Christmas always meant a turkey dinner, and my Grandma was the best at picking those bones clean and making a soup after the holiday. She also made our traditional Scotch Shortbread…I share more about that on a Squidoo Lens.

The last Christmas that I have a clear memory of was also the year that my youngest brother was born, my grandmother stayed with us to help care for us while Mom was recovering…my brother was a “New Year’s Baby”, born on January 1st. This was also the last Christmas, I believe, before my grandmother had her stroke in her later 60’s. She lived many years after that, passing away at the age of 90 thanks to the wonderful care of my grandfather. She was still able to visit at holidays, but not with the same energy as years before, but always a wonderful part of our traditional family gathering. I guess the melancholy comes for most of us from either to high expectations for the day, or in my case, missing those that used to be with us at the table that have gone on. But that doesn’t mean that when we gather on Christmas day, there won’t be plenty of love and laughter.

Have a blessed Christmas!

Treasure your family, and have patience with one another this beautiful time of the year.