The Dangers of Twitter: Was I Wrong?
Waay back in 2008, I blogged about the dangers of Twitter. In that blog, I made the case that it’s possible to pollute your favorite social media sites with compelling entries such as “I’m eating a burrito.” I thought that this could be off-putting to the people you could be trying to attract to your blog/online business by tweeting.
Today, I watched this video on johnchow.com:
Wow, this video makes a compelling case that “I’m drinking a cup of coffee.” Is something people might actually want to know!
Hmmm….
There’s only one conclusion.
If you want to tweet about your online business, do it.
If you want to share information you think is valuable, by all means.
If you want to tweet that you just let loose the juiciest fart of your life, absolutely, why not?
But…
I don’t have to read it.
Here’s the thing: I’ve seen a lot of people that don’t like Twitter because they think it’s a fat wad of wasted time. That’s cool. But, it is possible to use Twitter effectively.
Tim Ferriss uses Twitter to post information, alert readers of his latest blog entries, etc. At the time of this writing, he has 13,605 followers. How many people does he follow? Zero. I’ve seen blogs that say this means he must be a spammer. This is absolutely not true. He’s using Twitter very effectively to spread information that he feels is important. But, he has different avenues of research, etc. so he doesn’t even want to wade through the endless tweets to find information.
Myself, not being a respected, published author who is perfectly at ease hanging out with CEO-types all day, I use Twitter and Tweetdeck to ask for/ferret out information. I find this useful, so I have cut down on my “I just blew my nose” tweets, and instead, post my latest blog entries, link to favorite sites, news stories, etc. Usually, if I can’t attach a link, I don’t tweet.
I suppose the point of all this is that social media is what we make of it. I don’t tweet unless I can provide a link because that is the aspect that I enjoy. There’s not much you can say in 140 characters or less. You can, however, say just enough to entice readers to click on that link.
AND
If you find yourself following someone who incessantly tweets that they love pie, you can simply unfollow them.
Welcome to 21st century friendship! ;p
You can find more useful videos like this one at commoncraft.com
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Tags: blogging, In Plain English, John Chow, Networking, social networking, Tim Ferriss, Twitter
