Most people have heard of Twitter and most likely a vast majority of those have even signed up for it. For many, the mystique is gone and the account is no longer being used, sitting there to rot like tons of other websites that have been signed up for and long forgotten. I personally have over 100, and maybe even over 200 disposable addresses for sites I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I visited, and like everyone else, I wanted to see what the hype was all about.
It probably took a week before I realized what I had in front of me.
1) Finding resources
As some know, I work as a computer programmer. Still using a somewhat old language, Delphi, finding competent programmers and toolkits isn’t an easy task. A quick Twitter search of “delphi programming” revealed all sorts of links, sites, programmers and online resources, even email lists I never knew about.
2) Ways to enjoy your hobbies
We all have hobbies, and more than half of us have hobbies that only us or us and one other person actually participate in. For instance I have a fascination with railroad trains, mostly the old steam engine ones, but modern ones are cool too. A quick Twitter search of “train pictures” and you can come across links for test runs of new light rail systems, pictures of motorcoachs, stories of people who ride trains on a daily basis, news of recent derailments and even photo journals of trans-continental train journeys. It’s an easy way to find people interested in what you are, even if not all of them live near you.
3) Networking
Never before have I found such an easy way to get in contact with people doing what I want to do and willing to share their secrets more than I have with Twitter. Just a quick search on WeFollow and you turn up with tons of CEO’s, entrepreneurs, bloggers, motivational speakers, everything you need to help get you motivated to get past your funk, out of the job you hate, or better yet to improve the job you already love.
4) Instant updates
The biggest advantage of Twitter, in my opinion, is when you check your timeline, what you are seeing is typically what people are doing/thinking/experiencing right now, all your data is fresh and up to date. It isn’t like a blog post where someone was raving over a new idea, yet by the time you logged in and got caught up on the site, the idea has been expanded upon or worse, no longer relevant. There’s only so much time in the day, the most useful information is typically always the most current and that’s the first thing you see, get you to it so you can get on with the rest of your day.
5) Following is free
Some would tell you that the more people that are following you, the better. However it could be argued the more you follow the better. Follow anyone and everyone at first, find who has the most interesting and relevant to your lifestyle tweets, then later remove the rest. It doesn’t require their permission to follow them and for the most part, you definitely won’t be the guy with the highest followers or most followings, so use the service for what it’s capable of.
6) Fellowship
More than once I’ve heard a friend talk about someone else that I have yet to meet. With the very nature of tweets, you can know get to know someone before you’ve actually met them. Watching conversations over trending topics is interesting at least, valuable at most.
7) Involvement
I’ve read more than once blog post or article that I’ve really enjoyed and wanted to thank the writer for, however if your like me you hate to post an entire comment with just a “Good post, thanks for writing!” line to it, seems such a waste where an actual useful comment could have gone there. This sort of thank you post just screams tweet, reply to them and leave your message, 30 minutes later it’s long since scrolled off their screen and no longer taking up space, but you said it. Also, even the big guns of the industry have a bad day or have plans they look forward to, reading what those are and replying with a simple one line message probably opens more avenues of communication than you’d imagine and makes the whole process more fun. Getting your name known happens many ways.
All this is above and beyond your own need to tweet, which is another post all-together.
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