Well… not really! At least not anymore. I am so sorry if this is going to sound harsh to anyone but if you are one of those people who say “I don’t get Twitter” then… you may as well say “I don’t get internet”. We live in the world where technology changes fast, new things come around before you even know it. Twitter is one of them. Twitter is just the next step in our evolution, in the way we communicate. It’s not just another clone of facebook or social media application that will be fogotten in a few months. Here’s why:
1. WHAT’S GOT YOUR ATTENTION?
Yes, it did start with status updates. Then, at some point the leading ‘Twitter question’ transformed into something a lot more meaningful. Instead of informing the world about what you are having for lunch Twitter users started posting a lot more valuable content. Tweets about how the excessive amount of mayo is spilling beyond your sandwich – indeed, have no value. Tweets about new design resources online, wordpress blog tutorials, exciting photography, current events around the world – just the opposite, they are amazing eye openers and very often carry more value than any other social media connection you make out there.
2. IT’S LIVE!
Yes, you can use google and find information about pretty much ANYTHING online. There is however one important difference between searching Twitter and searching web content. Twitter is a live stream of information. Whatever you search for online had to be composed by someone, posted and indexed to come up in web searches. Nowadays it is faster than before yet Twitter is even faster than that – it’s instant, immediate without any delay. I have recently almost completely switched to searching Twitter over Google for information online. It’s amazing what and how fast you can find out as soon as you realize how powerful of a tool Twitter can really be.
3. CONNECTIONS
What seems to be another misconception about Twitter among those who are not using it is that what you ‘tweet’ about is only visible to those who follow you. This is only partially true. Add a ‘#’ tag right before the word that desribes the topic you are talking about and it will be visible to anyone who searches for that particular topic (any other word in your tweets is of course searchable too). The list of currently trending topics is always visible on your Twitter home page. You can join any conversation you want at any time. For example the trending topics at the time of writing this article are: #Sept11 #Facebook Lite #Jay-Z #God Bless America #TGIF #CoastGuard #Michael Jordan. Click one of them on your Twitter home page and you will see what people are saying about the given topic AT THE MOMENT. Reply to any of the users who’s tweet you find interesting. You just made your first connection. This is how I found out that you can buy the new Canon 7D at Circuit City for 15% less than anywhere else. It’s how I increased my knowledge about using word press blog from zero to confident within one afternoon. It’s how I connected with some amazing photographers out there, found new friends in other areas of life but most of all…
4. BOOKED MY FIRST WEDDING via TWITTER!
Have you heard yet that it pays off to use twitter for your business? You keep hearing that a lot of companies are on Twitter and are ‘using Twitter for business’ but you also keep wondering whether they have any measurable gains from wasting so much time on this new social media phenomenon. Well… it did pay off for me and my story is only a drop in the ocean. There’s of course plenty more significant stories out there but for us – wedding photographers this is what’s important right now. We spend a lot of our time breaking our heads about how to reach this ideal client that we are looking for, how to get noticed and put our wonderful work in front of the eyes of those who need to see it. Yet, there is a wonderful new tool out there that is based on the same principle any successful business uses – relationships between people! If you haven’t managed to appreciate it yet – it might just be worth exploring!
Some of us, members of G10 are active on Twitter. Follow us! David, Neil, Josh, Zlatko.
Preeti - Ooo, was that first wedding me?! (Well, not me, but you know what I mean.) 🙂
David Mielcarek - That would be correct! As you can see you also inspired a blog article!
Ben Dambman - Hi David, Your explanation of the hash tag is helpful, I did not realize how that worked. I’m in the transportation/tourism industry, and some of our bikecab / pedicab business comes from events & weddings. I’m trying to use twitter ( @chariots ) more but haven’t gotten past simply posting updates about our business or current events. What are some examples of how to connect with potential clients and others in the same industry?