Why you should be on Twitter posted by Nathan

As an avid and occasionally evangelical user of twitter, I have really enjoyed watching over the last couple of weeks a friend not only begin to explore twitter, but also really appreciate its value. There’s something great about seeing someone “get it.”

For all the column inches devoted to twitter in the mainstream media, I feel that it generally gets a pretty bad rap. A lot of people I speak to about twitter have the impression that it is pretty much a waste of time. I would suggest this perception comes from the fact that the majority of the coverage of twitter focuses on important issues such as Shane Warne’s thoughts on the taxation system.

So, in defence of twitter and to give the unconvinced a gentle nudge in the right direction, here is a list of the top five things I love about twitter. 

1.     News – This for me is one of the key benefits of twitter, it wins almost every time when it comes to news. Increasingly, news outlets such as The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian are posting news snippets to their twitter feeds before the full story hits their websites. Want or need to know the news first? Twitter’s the place.   

2.     Search – Outside of the news outlets, the immediacy and easy “searchability” of topics and keywords on twitter makes it the ideal place to find out what’s going on pretty much anywhere at any time. Stuck in a traffic jam and don’t know what’s going on? Someone on twitter will know and be talking about it. How are people reacting to the latest government announcement? You guessed it – find out on twitter.          

3.     Scale-able – TIME reported recently that there are more than 50 million tweets a day. It would take about ten years to read one day of all the tweets put out in a single day. While most of us thankfully don’t follow every twitter use in the world, even following the 1,000 or so people that I do can make it a challenge not to miss anything important. For me, this is third-party twitter apps like TweetDeck really come into their own and make twitter a much richer experience. Using TweetDeck you can arrange the people you follow into various columns based on topics. For example, I have my twitter stream into columns such as Friends, Media Outlets, Journalists, PR and Social Media, meaning at a glance I can easily catch up on what is making news and creating in areas of interest to me.  

4.     Monitoring – As a communication professional, it is essential that I keep up to date with what is being said about the brands, companies and causes I represent. While Google Alerts and other media monitoring tools are extremely useful, nothing is as instant as twitter. To be able to see in real time what people are saying about your clients is invaluable, so I have search columns running 24/7 for all of my clients. It can also be a great way of seeing media coverage spread, as people share and discuss news stories about your client. 

5.     Personal – I still think it is amazing how quickly we have gotten used to the idea that you can ask the Prime Minister, a brand and yes, even Shane Warne, a question on twitter and actually receive a direct reply from them. On a number of occasions I have made mention of some small consumer complaint on twitter only to receive a reply from a representative on the brand in question attempting to resolve my issue. On the flipside, I have able to help people talking about the companies I represent. While the Evocities campaign I am working on has no official twitter presence, I have still been able to make direct contact with the surprisingly large number of people posting questions about the campaign. Hopefully I’ve convinced some of them that a move to regional NSW is for them!

Additional to all of the above, I have another reason to love twitter – I found my job at SHJ through one of my twitter contacts!

Do you use twitter? What do you love about it or find most useful? If you don’t use it, why not?

SHJ has now joined the world of twitter. You can follow us at @SHJ_Aus where we’ll be sharing our favourite articles, blog posts and thoughts on the issues affecting our clients and industry. Most of the team in Sydney and Melbourne will be tweeting, so drop by for a chat anytime.