Discussion of twitter seems to be all the rage at the moment, so I thought I’d chip in, again.

I posted something a while back about “getting” twitter, and I have to say that whilst I am finding it worthwhile for myself, I can still understand why some people think it’s just another time sucking social black hole.

I now spend more time than I would prefer each day keeping an eye on my twitter feed, I use Twhirl.org, so it “beeps” me when there is something new, which does help.

Neil Shearing posted an “anti twitter” post recdently on his blog: -
http://www.neilshearing.com/2008/05/02/is-twitter-just-bird-chat-for-people-with-add/

and the ironic thing is that most of the replies he got to the post came from someone posting the link to his post on twitter…

Now Neil does fire of some fairly strong points about why and how twitter can be a waste of time, but if you read his post, and the replies you’ll notice that he actually mentions one of the reasons I enjoy twitter: -

“or a group of work colleagues twittering socially”…

If you only follow people you are interested in, then this is the situation you can get from twitter, and trust me, this makes it a powerful tool.

Suddenly I’m building relationships with “peers” that I might not have been able to get in touvh with via email, and it’s all happening naturally!

now you need to understand that I’m a fairly “practical” person (virgo) and am happy to kick things out if they are wasting my time, which I thought Twitter might, but I’ve somehow managed to put together a list of people that I follow that regularly supply me with interesting/useful info that I wouldn’t otherwise get.

Some of the “tweets” I’ve received have even helped me to provide my newsletter subscribers with very valuable content, as an example, just a couple of days ago Michael S Copeland Twittered about a free audio on how to deal with self limiting beliefs, which is a very important aspect of gaining success in life.

You can see my blog post about it, along with the link to the free audio and Mike’s blog post here:

http://iamuncovered.com/free-self-limiting-beliefs-audio/

I was able to shate that free audio with my subscribers because I saw Michael’s Twitter about it…

There’s another blog post I’d recommend reading if you are interested in building your own Twitter following…

http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-get-more-twitter-followers/

DoshDosh makes some excellent points, and yes you can get more Twitter followers by following other people, his example of “Osen” is perfect, but my advice would be very strongly not to do this.

It’s down to the twitter equivalent of website keyword targettiing, follow people people you are interested in, and twitter good stuff and you will gain followers who are actually interested in what you have to say.

Osen may have ended up with over 7 thousand followers (after signing up to follow ove 41 thousand other people, but how may of them are actually interested in what he has to say.

Osen’s tactic seems effective, but I would happily put money down on him not having made much money from that “experiment”.

and of course Mr ProBlogger, Darren Rowse, also has an opinion on twitter that’s worth reading: -

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/05/08/5-tips-to-grow-your-twitter-presence/

here’s the thing to remember though, Twitter is not going away.

Twitter is becoming bigger and bigger.

If you “get” Twitter now, I believe the time you spend will be a good investment.

For me, I know that I now have the opportunity to build relationships with people that it would have been hard to do so without twitter…

nuff said.
;]

Matt Garrett

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