Twittering - is it worth it?

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows you to post your up-to-the-minute updates – or “tweets” -- in real time. You can update others about your daily activities and keep track of what others are doing as well. It's like text messaging the world in 140 characters or less (spaces and punctuation included), or about a sentence and a half.

Most people I talk to are really, really busy and don’t see the value of this service, categorizing it as too much information (TMI). Others feel that those who “tweet” are all a twitter about nothing and don’t have a life.

I gave this a lot of thought – mostly because I too have thought of this as TMI. And it is, if people are talking about taking a coffee break, their shedding pet, a trip to the mail box, or other details that are, well, TMI even if you’re talking to the person. To me, that type of post is like someone talking out loud or thinking out loud – I block it out when they say it and I'll ignore it if they write it.

After getting past all the silly twitter status updates, I found some good ones that actually offered useful information. It was then that I realized maybe we marketers can make good use of this service.

I discovered that I actually know a few smart people who are using twitter as a social marketing tool. They write brief twitter updates with catchy titles and links that lead to more detailed information. Some name drop about famous authors and others. And that’s when I got to thinking about how I might be able to leverage this service in the same way for my business. Here's what I did for my first tweet:

I’m in the process of updating my Internet Marketing slide show that I’ll present on March 5th for Tech Month at The Enterprise Center in Salem MA in conjunction with the Massachusetts Small Business Development Center (MSBDC) and I want to write more about what that presentation includes for my blog and my Web site later, but I’m not ready yet to write that yet -- I’ve got to run out for a dog walk.

Now, according to what I’ve seen other people post on Twitter, another person might tweet about that dog walk. Instead, I chose to post an update that I’m working on the presentation for March 5th and included a link to The Enterprise Center where people can get a snap shot of what the program is about. Thus, my twitter post looks like this:

Preparing for internet mktg presentation 3/5 at Enterprise Center: http://www.enterprisectr.org/workshopschedule113.html

I’ve now told the world about it and anyone who is following me, or will be following me, can see that information.

Does it matter? Is it worth it? Hmmm … let me think…

At this time, not many people I know are using Twitter (because they think it falls into the TMI category - and I once agreed with them about that). And because not that many people I know are using Twitter, not that many people are going to see it. It might seem like a waste of time. But I’d like to think that if the 3 people following me find it interesting, they might tell someone else. Even if that doesn’t happen, it helped me think about what to write for this blog post. (I could write about so many things, choosing one and keeping it brief is another post.) It helped me focus on a topic that many, many people ask me about – a topic that leads to long discussions over coffee. So in the grand scheme of things, and at this time, the process of tweeting didn’t take much time, so I didn’t loose much time, so I guess it’s not exactly a waste of time …

I’m an early adopter. I signed up for it when it came out and did nothing with it other than follow others and learn how not to twitter. I’m going to take the wait and see approach and keep trying – but only as I come up with things I think might actually be interesting. For example, I am really going to go take that dog walk right now after I publish this blog post, but I’m not going to tweet about it.