Are You Guilty Of Twitterbating? (And Therefore Missing The Real Benefit Of Twitter)

Over the past few months I’ve been experimenting with Twitter (interrupted by our stay in South Africa when bandwidth was limited – sorry but you’re all going to have to hear me go on about it for ages now, especially as we’ll be back there for 6 months soon!!).

Twitter recently seems to have reached a tipping point as other online marketers have noticed and now every man and his dog is tweeting (look, you can even see my latest tweet up there under the blog banner).

At first along with many other newbies I just didn’t get the point; why bother with something that only lets you type 140 characters? Isn’t it just a great big fat waste of time?

Then I found quite a handy use for it…to update friends and family of our movements & whereabouts as we gad about the globe, narrowly catching flight connections and sitting bored in airports!

But it was only when I hooked up with the very funny Ann Ohio that I realised I had in fact been completely guilty of twitterbating (tweeting just to myself, spouting out updates in a one-way stream – don’t you just love that term?)…and therefore totally missing out on one of the best aspects of Twitter: having some fun, connecting with random people all over the world and taking part in 140 character twitversations.

And from a business perspective? Well, when social media expert, Chris Brogan tweeted a link to the LIP blog, it actually generated about 6 sales of the book – thanks Chris!…and yes, I did track the impact that your tweet had when you mentioned me ;-)

It’s also just one more tool where you can build your online profile and reputation, engage and interact with a community and if you’re lucky (and just a little bit savvy about it), generate interest in what you do.

Still not convinced? Check out Darren Rowse’s (the Problogger) advice on how to use Twitter. And if you’re really keen to get started, you can’t go wrong with Caroline Middlebrook’s Big Juicy Twitter Guide.

Happy tweeting!!

P.S. Don’t forget to follow me here >>>

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