I still love Twitter and here are six reasons why:
- It gives me the ability to connect with brands and people on my terms. I choose who and when I want to listen and engage with others. Twitter content providers, including myself, can “push” content all they want to. The readers choose if they want to listen to the messages.
- It gives me the ability to listen and follow current events on specific topics. Sometimes I want to get a feel for what people think about an event or how they are interpreting information. So I setup a real time Twitter search and listen. I’ve used this capability to listen to thoughts about trade shows, sporting events, and industry related topics to my field of work.
- It gives me another forum for primary research on topics of interest. If I’m looking for information about a topic I can choose to search tweets for the related keywords or I can post a request for information to the community at large.
- It gives me the ability to listen to some of the most influential and thoughtful minds in my industry. I follow content that adds value and diversity to my thinking. It teaches me.
- It forces content providers to stay on point with messages. At 140 characters, brands and people that use Twitter for messaging must be clear, concise, and simple. Just like cable TV and satellite radio give us oodles of choices for programming, we have many types of written media that compete for our reading time each week. Blogs, news, email, books, white papers, Twitter, Facebook, etc. At 140 characters it allows for quick scanning. Heck, I think its better than channel surfing on the tube!
- Where else can I listen and follow my workplace competition on a daily basis? Yes, I have a Twitter search setup specifically to listen to content that my competitor(s) is adding to the industry each day. This helps me understand how they are engaging customers and what type of information is important to them.
I’ll be honest, I follow much more information than I can read each day on Twitter. I use TweetDeck to help me group and classify information. Even with that, and based on all my other obligations in life, I’m not able to read and scan TweetDeck each day. Gasp! I know. That means I don’t see every tweet of every person or entity that I follow. But that’s not a limitation of just Twitter. It applies to any type of PR or marketing activity you may perform. If you content is relevant, people will choose to listen and engage.
So tweet-up. It’s a way to listen, contribute, and engage with others. Now that’s, good business.