Twitter – useful or useless?

Ok – so I’ve heard of twitter, and to be honest, did not get it. I mean what’s wrong with email and IM as a means for communication? Then in the lead up to the MVP summit in Seattle a few weeks back, someone suggested we use twitter as a way to meet up with who was going where/when etc. Still – I did not get it. Email can do that right? Following the MVP summit, I went to the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston, where I met a heap of new people. Social media was a big thing of discussion and in particular how you could use it to further your business interests. During the conference I noticed a number of people on twitter talking about things to people in other rooms. Hmm – I must check this out, so I did. What I found was that the discussions going on were adding immense value to the presentation being held both in this room and the one next door. Sure some people on twitter use it to tell people that they are heading out for a bio break and such (stuff we don’t really need to know), but others use it to communicate some really useful information too – such as the time and meeting place for dinner tonight 😉

Is twitter useful to me outside of this environment? To be honest, I’m not sure as yet. I plan to give it a go for the next month and see what happens.

I found a series of articles though that you may find useful. Jennifer Laycock has written them based on her experience, and whilst I was tempted to do the same, I thought I’d save the electrons and link to them here.

http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/part-one-from-twits-to-tweeple-why-i-emb.php

http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/part-two-from-twits-to-tweeple-why-i-emb.php

http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/part-three-from-twits-to-tweeple-why-i-e.php

And one last one from Matt Bailey – he was a speaker @ the event too

http://www.sitelogicmarketing.com/blog/04-soundbite-twitterbyte

So – my advice, get on to twitter and give it a shot. Find out if it makes sense for YOU with your own requirements. It may and it may not – but only YOU will know for sure.

Oh – and don’t be an ostrich with your head in the sand either or else someone will register a fake twitter account and tweet on your behalf like Vlad did with Susan 🙂 All good fun in this case, but it could be worse.