I just discovered Twitter a little over 2 months ago and now it is a big part of my daily routine. Twitter is a great equalizer when you join the stream you can follow everyone from your mother, to CEO’s to Google itself, and a lot of them will follow you back.
When I start researching blogs and articles for information on building an ecommerce business it is impossible to read it all. The great thing about Twitter you can follow people that have the same interests as you do and they are a wealth of great information that they are willing to share. You can then pass the information on to people who follow you be retweeting it.
Twitter is also a wonderful social connector for people who tend to be shy and in my case busy parents. All it takes is a few minutes to sit down at the computer and read the short tweets, it takes no time to read 140 characters. Then all you need to do is either respond or retweet. I love it because I can be free to say what I think and not have all the anxiety of meeting the person face to face and trying to carry on a long conversation, you can tweet on your own time table and still continue carrying on the same conversation. I know you can have similar exchanges in forums but on Twitter you can input from anyone who happens to see your tweet in the Twitter stream. Not just the the people that belong to the forum and respond regularly. My friends tell me that the internet is the perfect social medium for me as it takes away any social anxiety and exchanges can last from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. It is also perfect for perfectionists and ADHD people because you have time to get what you want to say right and it moves so fast you don’t have time to be bored. It is also a wonderful tool for multi-taskers because you can click on links and have 10 or 12 tabs open and work on as many as you want at one time.
To get the most out of Twitter you actually have to use it, and not just as a promotional tool but as a real social tool. I can say that when you first start out on Twitter and a person with 2000 or 10,000 followers responds to something you say it makes you want to use it more and build those connections. I make you feel like your thoughts matter in the very large world wide web. Twitter is a global medium so someone is always online so if you are a night owl you can talk to someone across the world
I use Tweetdeck for keeping track of my tweets because I can set up groups for the different kind of people I follow. I do notice that I tend to interact more with some people and less so with others but unless I am way behind in my tweets I do read them all. You never know what nugget of information you will come across.
So after just using Twitter for 2 months I can see why it adds value to both my social connections and my ecommerce business. I have met some great people who have really taken the time to interact with me while I learn. You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mommytoaaj. You should try it you never know who you will find.
