I have been using Twitter for close to three years now. When I initially started on the platform I was pretty much clueless on how to actually use it to its fullest potential. Sure I would tweet news items that I thought might interest my followers but I wasn’t getting any real engagement. I felt somewhat intimidated to tweet to total strangers. For me it was like walking into a huge convention and my tiny exposition booth was far away from the foot traffic tucked behind a support column, and meekingly saying “Hi, I am here.”
For a full year I would blindly follow anyone who followed me. It was a struggle to maintain and gain new followers. At the end of that year I was thinking that Twitter was a complete waste of time.
But I stuck with Twitter. The second year I was more selective in who I was following , I started re-tweeting more frequently, and was also a bit more choosy on what I would tweet about. By then I had started blogging so I was sharing articles from my blogs and other blogs that I was following. I was attending seminars and webinars and listening to social media pundits on how to use Twitter successfully.
My following/followers numbers grew quite a bit, but I was still missing the getting “connected” or being “engaged” with my followers. My second year on Twitter I knew that Twitter was a valuable tool for my and my client’s businesses to interact with followers which I was doing, or at least I thought I was.
I wrote an article about the Brown Coffee company and the hit they took to their brand by one single tweet. It was the voice of communication with the middle east rebellions and the Japan earthquake, it was the choice of communication to talk about politics, sports, and the Virginia earthquake. Twitter is a very powerful tool.
I started listening more intently. I continued attending webinars and reading books, watching and reading how other successful Tweeps interacted on Twitter.
This past third year I finally understood what engagement really means. I started to actually chat with other people through Twitter. It first started with tweeting about the weather, and now I’m establishing business relationships with like-minded individuals. I know more about some of followers than what’s on their bio. Followers are looking to my tweets for information.
Coming to end of third year on Twitter I have resoundingly realized just how powerful and useful Twitter is to your business and your brand.
I will end with a Twitter story and some parting thoughts.
I’ve been tweeting a lot about Blogworld and New Media Expo in New York quite a bit. The first reason is that I’ll be attending “virtually.” The other reason is that Blogworld has expanded its Podcast track quite a bit and since I just started a podcast I’m very interested in what they are tweeting about it.
Couple of weeks ago I happened to re-tweet an update which didn’t have a link. A person replied asking for the link. I sent the link off rather quickly and received a thank you. Rather than just dismissing that person I took a deeper interest in her bio, clicked on her website, read a couple of her articles and watched a couple of her videos. Took about 5 or 10 minutes. I happened to notice that she entered a 30 day video blogging (vlog) challenge. In my tweet back I said “you’re welcome Jen good luck on the 30 day vlog challenge. Awesome!” From there I got invited to participate in the challenge and got introduced to the guy that put the whole challenge together.
The point of this story is by digging just a little deeper beyond the bio with those that you interact with can lead to more than just a simple “You’re welcome!”
Wrap Up
Twitter I think is like the red-headed step-child – thrown aside for being immature, full of spam and celebrities and sports figures saying the wrong thing and getting reprimanded or worse fired. I truly believe despite its surface of constant barrage of tweets after tweets, there are these fantastic moments where you find likeminded people – whether it’s about a particular subject or object – it’s these moments that make Twitter just stand out as an awesome social network and it is amazing to me that a business relationship can start with one tweet in 140 characters or less.
What are your thoughts on Twitter?
