I'm starting to embrace Twitter more and more enthusiastically, as I use it more and become comfortable with it. I'm an advocate of continuing education and staying abreast of industry news, trends and new ways/ideas for doing something. I'm finding Twitter to be extremely helpful in that pursuit.
I still read about six or eight trade and professional publications a month. That has always been my way to know what was going on, hear about new ideas and the like. I'm starting to find that the lead times for publication make that media almost dated by the time it's published. Even weeklies like AdWeek and Ad Age print content that I've already seen or actually read through with all the electronic updates I now receive.
I created my Twitter account maybe two or so years ago with the username @HeadhunterBob (I encourage you to follow me!). I had no idea what to do with that account for the longest time, yet I kept having people follow me. I couldn't figure it out, I'd never sent one tweet, yet I had followers!
Over the past few months, I've started tweeting more frequently and I'm feeling very good about that for two reasons. One, I feel like I'm "giving something back" . . . I've been told that followers appreciate the content of my tweets and enjoy reading many of them. Second, I read more . . . a lot more. I now read articles from literally scores of sources, including blogs, and articles of others I follow on Twitter. It's enlightening. I feel like I have a much better idea of what's going on, much sooner.
I'm sure you know that Twitter now integrates with the LinkedIn update box in your profile. You can send tweets right from LinkedIn!
I tweet about issues related to recruiting, employment, employee retention, employer culture, marketing and advertising trends, etc.. In short, content that should be of interest to most in our marketing/employer/employee communities. There are several other applications that have grown up around the world of Twitter, that I've found very useful. I'd like to share some of those.
The most important is probably Tweet Deck. Tweet Deck pushes the tweets of those you follow. On Twitter.com, you have to refresh the page to see new Tweets. Tweet Deck also allows you to follow several of (your own) accounts at the same time, as well as notifying you of any "direct tweets", or mentions of your username. It's flattering to be "re-tweeted" and Tweet Deck tells you when that happens.
TweetChat is an application that lets you use the #(hashtag) to find people to follow in particular categories of interest . . . in my case, marketing, advertising, media, etc.. Twitter itself has an advance search capability that isn't so easy to find (you could look for users in your city). If you'd like to tweet a photograph, use Twitpic. Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you.
The last tip I have goes beyond Twitter. It's a preferred method for shortening urls. The reason it's preferred is that bit.ly tracks the number of times a particular url that you've sent has been clicked. It's very cool and far superior to tinyurl, for example.
Go to Twitter, create a username and profile and get out into the Twitterverse! It's fun and you'll actually learn something!
For those of you already using Twitter, do you have any stories of it's benefits?