To Tweet or Not To Tweet...

Twitter is the fastest growing social media platform in the world. The latest stats indicate that more than 32 million people are using this service for communication, collaboration, marketing, customer service, advocacy, market research, and fundraising. Everyone seems to be tweeting these days. If you aren't using Twitter already, you might want to check it out to see what everyone is buzzing about.

Amazing What You Can Do With 140 Characters…
Twitter, a real-time micro-blogging platform, is free and fairly intuitive. Posts are limited to 140 characters. Unlike Facebook, the Twitter interface gives you just two basic options: reading other tweets or composing your own. That's it. More good news: Twitter is about making new friends and building relationships. It's about making new contacts, giving, and receiving. It's also easy to build a following fairly quickly on Twitter.

There's not much of a downside to Twitter unless you have zero self-control. You can get sucked in to reading pages and pages of Twitter updates. But don't! Read what's on your screen, post an update or two, and leave. You can also get sidetracked by all of the fancy applications available to Twitter users. Don't do that either--at least not in the beginning. Start by identifying a few people or organizations you care about…then follow, observe, listen and learn the ropes.

You Probably Won’t "Get" Twitter Initially…
Until you have been using Twitter consistently for three or four months, you might be frustrated and have every reason to be. Twitter might very well be too simple. Don't look for it to be more complicated than it is or to reveal a deeper meaning. It will take time to understand what Twitter is all about and to learn how to use it effectively to build a following.

I have been using Twitter for more than a year, and my account sat mostly neglected for the first couple of months. I couldn't see or understand the possibilities and very few people I knew were using Twitter or had even heard of it. When Twitter exploded last year during the election and I rejoined the fun.

Give it a try. The longer you are on Twitter, the more you will understand the benefits and the more people you will meet. Twitter is now a key part of my marketing strategy. To sign up for your Twitter account, just go to http://twitter.com.

You can follow me http://twitter.com@davidlsharp or http://twitter.com@sharpconsults

Please share your thoughts...
Cheers!

Dave Sharp
Sharp Consulting Group, LLC