By far I think this is the top frequently asked question posted to me when I mentioned that I tweet. A question that I could not answer quickly without giving some thoughts to it and recollecting how I was using twitter.
I first become aware of twitter and other micro-blogging platform some 6 to 8 months back, but I didn’t jump on the bandwagon then. I was busy with figuring out blogging. As my first blog gradually shaping up nicely, I started to look at other stuff around it to complement my blog and to be able to connect and communicate with my readers more.
About February / March this year, there are a few influencers / twitter advocates talking about twitter again. That’s about the time I started to take a serious look at twitter. So that was when it started for me.
I did a little quick search around when I am preparing for this post. First of all, I popped by www.Twitter.com for a definition:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Well, yes I do have friends as my twitter followers, but it did not seemed to be quite what twitter had described. I have more followers whom I do not necessary know in real life, I’ve also met new friends online and chatted.
How I really use twitter?
1. To do a quick scan of “what’s hot!” news worldwide or locally. You can easily identify “what’s hot” simply by looking at the amount of retweets (RT) or if it’s very frequently mentioned topic by the large majority of users.
2. To do quick survey on a certain topic of interest, the best thing here… the responses are “live”. If you have a huge follower base you can actually get good opinion just by tweeting the question to your followers.
3. By following people who tweet about the same interest, I get to discover great post or websites that I have miss out by the way I search for information on the web. That cut research time tremendously. It reduces time needed to scan through tons of websites and pages before landing on the right page. Let’s put it this way, you have a lot of talented and qualified research assistance around you.
4. Chat with like-minded folks around the world.
5. The search for independent service provider becomes a lot easier. There’s no restriction to what you are looking for, be it cost effectiveness, quality, creativity or other attributes. You get look at past users comments, past works and gauge for yourself what suits your requirements.
6. Occasionally, I do use it to push out good blog post, it may not be coming from my personal account. I do have separate channels for theme blog.
These are just some of my more common uses, there’s no limit to what you can use it for seriously, and new uses are waiting to be found.
What about you? How do / would you use twitter? Drop me a comment and let’s share ideas.
