As many of you already know, Twitter is social messaging site where people can communicate with each other. I started using it a year ago and at that time users were slowly adapting to it, which is why I stopped using it. If you fast-forward to today, it seems that everyone is on Twitter, which is why I started using it again. But after using it for a few weeks, I learned a few things:
- Time – just like any other social site out there, Twitter can be time consuming. Twitting away sounds simple and fast, but if you add up all the time you spent on Twitter, it can be a big number.
- Traffic – I currently have over 3000 followers, so when I twit something it can potentially drive decent traffic. Quick Sprout in general doesn’t get much traffic so every bit helps.
- Conversion – I am always looking for more RSS subscribers and commentors. Twitter doesn’t a do a good job at increasing them. This could just be my experience, but nonetheless the traffic doesn’t convert well for me.
- Branding – just like most social networks, Twitter is an good place to build up your brand. If you setup your profile with your image, network with other members, and twit frequently, people will get to know you.
- Money – if you are looking to make tons of money from Twitter, you better start looking somewhere else. Some people make a few bucks here and there by twitting about products, but I personally haven’t seen anyone make 5 figures a month off of it. Anything less in my mind isn’t worth it.
- Entertainment – if you are looking for a fun place to communicate with friends, Twitter can do the trick. It makes it easy to follow your friends and communicate with them on a regular basis.
- News – it is hard to keep up with all the news out there, but through Twitter it is easy. If you are following the right people, you can find out about important news right when it breaks.
Overall Twitter has a few Pros and Cons, which brings one question to mind. Is Twitter worth using?
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I go back and forth on twitter. On one hand it is a useful but on the other it can be an overload of information. How many people can you follow without going nuts? I’m sure their is a ceiling for all of us.
Let’s be honest. Twitter is worth because cool silicon valley people are using it and tech crunch will write an article about them once a week. lol.
Yea, once you follow too many people it becomes useless. I was following 7000 plus people at one point and I got no value from Twitter. I am currently following 2k plus people, but slowly I am reducing that number.
That seems like a lot of stuff to follow. Seems the conversation and usefulness of twitter would be lost. Congrats though on knocking out 5,000.
Thanks, it took forever to remove them. The worse part about it is that Twitter still shows I am following 200 plus people when I am not even following 100.
I love twitter for the interaction and conversation it can provide. How can it be a bad thing to be more sociable with your online peers? Hell yes, it’s worth using.
@neilpatel: You truly feel that any project that nets under five figures per month is a waste of time? Hmmmm.
Well for others it could be worth it, but I only have 24 hours in a day. If something can’t make enough, it isn’t worth me putting resources towards it because it would cause me to lose money.
I think during the off season Lebran James should sign autographs at the mall for 5 bucks a pop, just for the money, because he can… There definitely comes a time where you begin to lose money by not doing other ventures.
That is very true and it can work for Lebran because in basketball there is an off season. But sadly in my world there isn’t.
Just like any other popular social network, you have to claim your name for personal branding purposes, but at the cost of having to spend time using it.
Luckily I got my name on Twitter. It would suck if I could not use my name like others. If you look at some of the famous profile names on Twitter, squatters got them and gained a lot of followers because those names were well branded before.
Getting the news as it breaks and making new connections is worth every penny of the time I spend on it. As for making money, Twitter has a leg up on Instant Messaging and thats about it.
Thats true. But I have seen people make tons of money by selling AIM names. I would pay a fortune to the person that has the name “neil” on AIM.
I’ve been on-and-off with Twitter. While using it I’ve found some great value in opening up channels of commucation with people I wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to talk with. For that reason it’s been great. However, after a week of using it I started realizing just how much of my time it was sucking up. At some point brand building means doing some actual work.
I’ve also found that some of the people I followed based on their notoriety clog up the pipe with a lot of, well, crap. General complaints about the way their day is going and such. It’s good to network and see what people are up to, but I don’t really care that you spilled coffee on your lap this morning – sorry.
Makes sense on the “crap” part, but you can pick who you want to follow. So if you feel someone is twitting crap, stop following them.
I’ve just started using twitter so I’m still on the “wondering phase”… At the meantime I must admit it feels quite lonely as a beginner.
Check out newbie’s guide to Twitter.
True…good point.
Twitter comes in handy when groups of people all have mobile access. About 20 of us left an event last night and all ended up at a hotel bar after someone tweeted info on an after party. Those following at least one member of the group and checking tweets knew about the event. Became the topic of discussion while having drinks.
Yea, if everyone in a certain group is using Twitter it can be very useful. As you already know, the same thing goes with the SEO industry and Twitter.
I think Twitter has its advantages but it has to be managed right to be effective. I am dismayed at the amount of spamming going on there.
The thing with spamming is, most good things get spammed. If people are not trying to spam, then they usually hold little value.
Twitter, as one of my blogging buddies put it, is essentially “skywriting.” It’s great for getting a message out but the more planes in the air, the harder it is for people to see what you’re writing. All in all, I think Twitter is a positive force in the web 2.0 world. I recently wrote an article about its usefulness on my blog interwebers.com – http://tinyurl.com/3uw8×7
Nice analogy! Is it me, or is the link you place in the comment not working?
I don’t know what happened there. Here’s the real link instead: http://interwebers.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/the-power-of-twitter/
I signed up with Twitter yesterday and I feel really lost. First of all, I have no idea what I am supposed to do and second where I should go…
Let’s give it some time like everything else that is online and see what happens. Btw, I launched my new blog few days ago and would appreciate if you could drop by and give your valuable suggestions on how to make it better…
Asela,
Click on my link above. It might help give you some ideas in getting started with Twitter.
Thanks Chris… going there now.
As for your previous comment about blog feedback, here are a few things:
1. Place an orange RSS button in your sidebar.
2. Try and think of another tagline, other than “technologies”. Something that does a better job at representing your content.
3. Add your picture to your about page.
4. Try to keep your blog content on one topic. Blogging on website traffic and Iron man can make it difficult to figure out what your blog is about.
Overall your blog is great. Hope these changes help.
Thank you… I will try to Implement most of them. Just so you know… Crystalaxis Technologies is the name of my company and the blog is pretty much about everything related to what I do, what I like and alternatively what I don’t like…
Thanks again…
Only recently started using it. There’s some overlap between twitter and Facebook’s status update, but I can def see it’s potential
I really like Twitter. But, you are so right, if you are not careful, it will suck you in on a Monday and spit you out on a Wednesday morning going Fu*k…..I haven’t done shit for two days.
I primarily use it now, to watch others and learn what they are into and what new stuff is coming out. It seems like 85% of the people on Twitter are Marketing / PR folks. I know that’s just my experience but, for me it’s good because every entrepreneur needs to know what the heck is happening.
Now, when I use Twitter (and anything else for that matter) I know exactly why I am going in and do it and go. It’s kinda like going to Wal-Mart for toothpaste, by the time you get there, you have already spent an hour in the place.
cheers man great post!
Twitter is worth using if you want a presence in social media. It’s most useful to the celebrity users who have thousands of followers. Hence the hype. They promote it based on their experience which is dramatically different from the average user.
Worth wading into but not a real asset. You would be better off spending that time working on your blog.
IMO Twitter is just plain lucky, it got required initial publicity when it was launched and thus became a success. It is surprising that it has survived and grown so much despite delivering such a mediocre service. Maybe no one else sees any benefit in doing such a thing.
I think it is also how the community was structured that helped make it popular. Without your friends being on there, it is almost useless. For that reason, you would invite them, which helps the community grow.
I’ve thought about using Twitter as a marketing tool (and I do use it as one to some extent), though I like keeping it to only friends I actually have online. Makes it feel much more personal.
It’s kind of annoying (and disappointing) when someone follows me and I check out their Twitter page and I see they’re following thousands and only 25 people are following them.
Don’t let that be discouraging. Just think about all the other people that “really” follow you. You must be doing something right for them to take interest.
I’ve checked twitter a couple of times, just to see what the fuss was about and like most social network sites it’s very time consuming with little return, I think it should fall under the time wasters you should avoid to save time
If you don’t build up your profile it probably won’t provide any value, but once you do I think it can be useful. You just have to be willing to put in that upfront time just like anything worth wild.
Currently i am having about 300 Twiter follower, but still no special use, most of the twitter users are making use of twitter for there blogs !
Based on what I can tell, you also have a blog. You should use Twitter to promote your blog.
I can’t get into twitter – I know, how uncool of me, right? I feel like I can’t possibly even keep up with email, what chance do I have of actually twittering long term?
When I occasionally read other people’s tweets I feel embarrassed for them. People say stupid (irrelevant) things that I don’t care about.
I know – tragically unhip – but I can’t get over it.
What you can do is only follow people that say useful things. This way Twitter will be more interesting for you.
I think the best part about twitter is the fact the communications are short and sweet, so I don’t mind reading them. Email gets too long sometimes, whereas Twitter forces people to be succinct.
It’s also a great way to keep up with what your friends, enemies and even competition is doing. For some reason some people like to tweet about every thing their doing, places their going, what their working on, etc. In some cases it can be good to know what your up against.
Using a third party app like Tweet Deck (www.tweetdeck.com) or Twhirl (www.twhirl.org) make using twitter easier.
Sometimes I feel that tweets are too short. I wish the limit was higher.
Hey Neil, I just signed up for twitter (for a contest Shoemoney is doing) other than that is twitter really worth it? It looks somewhat plan compared to other social networks such as facebook and myspace.
It is. Recently Quick Sprout has been getting good traffic and new readers from Twitter.
It is going to be almost a year since this was posted, have your thoughts on Twitter changed?
It has. I love Twitter now.
It’s funny how you and other’s opinion of twitter evolves/changes for the better. Normally it’s the other way around, people start off loving something, and then can no longer stand it, a la myspace.
Yea. I guess as we get into it more, we tend to love it.
I started a Twitter account a year ago and had a hard time figuring it out. I tried again a couple of months later and I have been hooked ever since. You are very right that you need to control your time, but there is some serious value in getting your ideas out to 1,000’s of followers in just 140 key stokes.
With Twitter, as long as you twit good stuff, you will naturally get a lot of followers.
Following Guy Kawasaki is fascinting.
Yep, he is a smart guy. He just tweets a lot so it can be hard to follow him.
Neil, being a new blogger I always enjoy when you educate us newbies and certain terms “twitter” is one of them. I don’t currently use it but after reading its advantages I need to look into it more. thanks again.
I am regular user of twitter but I really don’t know how to earn money from twitter?
Not too many people do. The easiest way to is twit about products that are cool and use affiliate links.
I am on twitter but I am too ADHD to have that hing on while at work. I find it is the best way to complete absolutely nothing. Sure I read a whole bunch of cool stuff but get nothing done at the same time. It’s like I am a dog chasing my own tail, wondering where it keeps going.
Spend your evenings working with it. Play around with it and create conversations with others.
Thanks I have started working on it at night and have learned how to customize it so I only receive notification for certain people and it can randomly rotate it as well so I don’t need to manually pick all the time!
Great, now that you’ve learned to be a major time savor, you’ll more time to spend doing whatever it is that you do.
I am just beginning to figure Twitter out. Now I have the basics down, I am getting overloaded with all the different applications and products that supposedly make it easier to use. So far I have found it to be a great networking tool, but I agree with you. Unless I figure out a specific strategy, it is probably not going to be the best place for targeted traffic to my website. It seems very difficult to filter out all the spam. So not sure how easy it will be to cut through all this noise and make my message stand out to individuals that may need my service.
It’s important to act on it as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more and more people are going to jump on board.
I am actually finally spending a little bit of time with it and I doubled my followers today. Don’t get excited, it went from like 35 to 70 but it was still pretty cool. I found a new app that is helping me get it all organized and figure out what I should be doing. Although I haven’t done too much other than tweet my blog posts, I can see how it could drive some decent traffic to my site once I get up and running.
I think the big thing though, is just to focus on providing good, resourceful or funny tweets to contribute to the community.
That’s fantastic!!! Hey, any gain is better than no gain at all.
On digitalpoint you hear markets complain about why they dont have that many retweets and clicks ect and they follow like 10000 people who are there to just get you to click there article or sell you somthing ect. Let people follow you dont follower others.
Many people have yet to understand that type of setup, but fortunately, twitter has come out with the LISTS feature.
Twitter became huge because it has helped so many people increase their traffic exponentially.