Will Twitter help my website?
How can Twitter help me grow my business?
Isn’t Twitter just a waste of time?
What is Twitter?
I have Twitter account, but I still don’t “Get It”
Why do I care what someone had for lunch?
Why is there all this crap on Twitter?
These are just a few of questions my friends, family and clients have asked me of the last year, all reasonable questions. If you are looking at Twitter as ‘full of junk’ you may never get the value that is out there. YES, Twitter is definitely full of clutter and misuse – as is much of the “no/low cost media.”
I won’t go into great detail about what twitter is, I have another blog post for that. In short Twitter is a 2-way broadcast application that functions via the web and SMS text networks on mobile phones. BORING but true. It is a gateway, nothing more, nothing less. Ahh but the information that is on Twitter, that is where the fun begins.
I like to think of Twitter as a legal Wire Tap for the web – I do use it as a broadcast tool, but I really like to use it as a listening device.
Want to know what’s happening at any given moment in the twitterverse? Just visit the Twitter Search Tool and type in what it is you want to know and POOF. It truly is a wiretap – with results that were posted just seconds before.
And if you leave your page sitting on that search it will continually refresh and let you know when that topic has had new twitter posts, too. So is it a way to attack and send a provoking marketing message? Uh, NO, not if you want to be taken seriously. You can use it to find like minded folks, people who have the same interests or interests in line with your marketing offers.
You can also use it to see when your company name or product appears in Twitter too …so you can monitor the conversation, engage and help when possible. (Just check out @comcastcares )
So what will you listen for today?