After 110 Pages of Tweets is Twitter Worth It?
On March 5, 2010 – I celebrated my first Twitterversary. It came and went without much fanfare as I forgot that it happened. However, I thought it was worth reviewing my progress over the past year.
In my first 365 days, I wrote 2,743 tweets – which is about 110 pages worth of tweeting. I have to admit that I was shocked that I had written so many pages of tweets. (For the math people this assumes that each tweet takes up 1 line in a page and there are 25 lines per page.) It made stop for a few minutes and reflect on what I had learned over the past year from using this new tool.
Below are some things that I have learned. Have a look and then let me know if you think all of this tweeting was really worth it? or was it a massive waste of time? Of course, if you have things to add from your own experiences – please do so. The more the merrier!
20 Things I Learned in My First Year of Tweeting
- Twitter is a super-simple way to publish messages. How hard is it to write one sentence and hit send? Not hard.
- When you have 1,000 followers it is impossible to listen to what everyone is saying with equal attention.
- Tools like TweetDeck and Hootsuite help me organize my Twitter “ears” and listen to the people and conversations that are most important to me.
- I choose the conversations to follow and dip my toe into other conversations of interest throughout the day.
- In some twitter groups – members find and share articles that would be impossible for 1 person to find on his own and in a timely manner.
- Twitter is a great way to spread content to like-minded individuals.
- Twitter isn’t for all people.
- Twitter is public – so it won’t work for any private or confidential corporate events.
- Many-to-Many conversations on Twitter are fast-moving, action packed and fully archived. Watch what you say!
- Conversations on Twitter can be archived at wthashtag.com. This is a great resource to go back and review what was said.
- I once summarized a full conversation of tweets with 1 tweet. Is that good or bad?
- I started this blog because of Twitter. I know 10 others that did the same.
- Twitter is a super-simple way to connect remote and virtual attendees.
- While the movers were packing boxes at my home, I participated in a conference via Twitter 4000 miles and nine time zones away.
- Luckily, not everyone is on Twitter.
- I never had any interest in following Shaq, Britney Oprah or Aston Kucher.
- The #eventprofs community on Twitter is awesome.
- I attended a conference in February because of the people that I met on Twitter. I had an awesome time! Some people think I was crazy.
- I attended a conference in March because someone tweeted that they were attending. Does that make me a stalker?
- Twitter introduced me to thousands of interesting people in the past year. If it weren’t for them – I would have left this technology long ago.
Bottom Line
While Twitter is a simple technology – it is a powerful communication tool. After 110 pages of tweets, I am very thankful for the people that I met on Twitter this past year. Without them – I probably would have abandoned the technology very quickly. Thank you Twitter friends!