4 things you can learn from twitter
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If you want an example of what not to do on twitter, read this post by self-proclaimed tech geek Robert Scoble. Few of us need to follow or have followers that amount to 106,000 people. He’s an extreme example. Forget about him.
Here are 4 things you can learn from twitter:
1. Breaking news as it happens – surpassing CNN and any other news networks. Maybe you’re not a news junkie like me, however, so read on to number 2.
2. Links to articles and trends in your profession. I follow mostly PR pros, and they provide me with valuable links to information about the latest info in public relations. Necessary in order to keep on top of my specialty.
3. Events of interest in your city. Through twitter, I found out that one of my favorite musicians, Shawn Colvin, is coming to Scottsdale in October.
4. New friends in unexpected places. I’ve made new friends through my tweets (they see them and comment on them) and through tweets of others (I follow the phrase “PR Strategy” on twitter, and tweetdeck pulls up every reference for me automatically).
If you think twitter is just about people posting what they ate for dinner, think again. You’re missing out on a treasure trove of information and fun. For a quick and painless way to get up to speed, I highly recommend a twitter webinar that Dave Barnhart of Blogging Business Pros holds every few weeks. For $59.00, you’ll come away with a solid understanding of what all the “fuss” is about.
Your point #2 has been the biggest reason I’ve found it to be a useful tool. This is true regardless of your industry/profession.
It’s like having hundreds (thousands!) of birddogs in your niche who are digging up valuable info all the time, 24×7.
I’ve been Twitter-free for several years now and still looking for compelling reasons to become a Twit — besides some of the crowd-gathering reasons I’ve seen that don’t make a lot of sense to me.
I did like your Big 4 though.
Still…
1) I’m a news junkie but there’s hardly any piece of public news anywhere that I can’t wait 10- 15- or 30 minutes to hear unless it’s the results of a world series or NBA championship or the like…and chances are I can find those out within minutes without breaking a sweat. Did I need to know instantly when Obama was officially announcing his candidacy last year? Hardly. I was all for him but that was hardly “news.” The breaking news I really need — Is our tennis match going to be cancelled because of rain? Are we going to miss our movie because you’re running late? Where the heck in the mall or stadium are you? — can be handled just as easily via texting or cell phone calls.
2) Links to articles — now this is what I had hoped to take advantage of, a real killer app. But I guess the articles I want are more like the latest debunking of the Shroud of Turin or the James ossuary, or what’s going on with investigating the Phoenix area televangelist house-buying scammer. I guess I don’t much care about breaking headlines or news covered by a single issue-dedicated Twitperson.
3) Events — again, something of potential interest, but why would Twitter do a better job of conveying this information than the places one can automatically go to for published information? I love Shawn Colvin, but it’s not as though she’s sneaking into town late at night and only a few in-the-know folks are privy to the info.
4) New friends — it’s always nice to have new friends but as I have come to understand, being a “friend” takes a lot more work (the good kind) than people give it credit. It takes a wealth of shared experiences, favors asked and given, moving trucks unloaded, confidences held, broken and renewed. Maybe I’m just picking on the lexical term “friends”, so, yes, we can make friends of a sort through electronic means, but I’m thinking what is really meant is “connections.” (not a bad thing).
The Big 4 are indeed non-trivial points in favor of Twitter. My current reluctance to embrace Twitter seems to be the amount of over-hype (as opposed to regular hype) for what is touted as a miracle modality of communication that all businesses need to be doing. Yet the number of instances that I’ve had related to me about truly great Twit situations — “Twituations,” if you will — are pretty much accounted for using less than the number of fingers on one hand.
I tried doing one of those “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” product checks that was recently touted as a great way to use Twitter to get an instant consumer reaction to something I was considering buying. What I disoovered was something I already new: more data is not necessarily more information.
Hey…I should write that one down and use it somewhere.
Jim, you raise some good points and ones I’ve heard from friends – but only my friends “of a certain age.” So does that mean age = wisdom? Or perhaps, age = recalcitrance? (oooh, good word). Or age = resistant to change?
I too was a disbeliever. My post hopefully will persuade those on the fence. As Tee Morris commented, however (he wrote ‘All a twitter,’ if someone doesn’t get it, “That doesn’t mean they’re missing out or not as sharp as you. It just means that…they don’t get it. If you try to make them get it, that makes a bad situation only worse.”
So my fence sitters – this post is for you. For the non-believers, rise, and go in peace.
Excellent article. I have found twitter to be a great tool not only to communicate with clients and the media, but a great way to expand my network both near and far.