It's taken me a long time to understand the usefulness of Twitter (or to use the generic term, microblogging) but a podcast I did recently with Ross Mayfield helped me see the light. Truth be told, I began to come around on the benefits of microblogging when I started using the "edit status" feature on Facebook. With Facebook skinned into my Firefox browser, I watched as a number of my friends would tell me that they were "listening to jazz," "stressing about writing a client proposal" or "preparing for an upcoming conference."
In the spirit of full disclosure, I just began using Twitter a few weeks ago so I'm still somewhat of a newbie. However, I have been using my Facebook "edit status" feature for a few months now so I have a pretty good handle on how this works. Part of what pushed me over the edge is that there is now an app. that allows you to "tweet" or message users and update your Facebook status simultaneously.
Jeremiah Owyang recently wrote a great primer for Marketing Profs on how to use Twitter, it's history and some of its shortcomings. By the way, Jeremiah is avid Twitter user (one of the cool things about the tool is you can elect to "follow" certain people. He Twitters at least 20 times/day, something he took to the next level recently at Forrester's Consumer Forum where he actually "Twittered" the event vs. simply blogging it.
Another friend -- and our PR guy for the We Are Smarter project -- Peter Himler, Twittered the PRSA Conference yesterday so I get a sense that this is a phenomenon that is quickly catching on. We are sponsoring ForumOne's upcoming Marketing and Online Communities Conference on November 8 so that may be my virgin pass at Twittering an event.
So what's so special about this hybrid of one sentence blogging meets text messaging? That was what flummoxed me for so long until my chat with Ross M. Prior to hitting the "record" button on our podcast, I asked him, "based on your blog, it's obvious that you are a big Twitter fan. Why do you like it so much and what's Twitter's biggest business benefit?" The essence of Ross' answer was that it provides a continual partial presence to clients, friends and other thought leaders. Wow!
Anyone that has ever worked on branding understands the power of being top of mind. It's what all great companies strive for, especially as consumers stroll the mall. Imagine GAP, Apple, Neiman Marcus or J Crew being able to touch you 20 times a day (without annoying the hell out of you.) They would kill for this opportunity. Granted, I'm doing a bit of an apples to oranges comparison but you get my point. If I have customers, friends or collaborators that I want to be in front of regularly, this is a great tool to do so.
If you want to join this experiment and follow me (I promise I'll reciprocate,) my Twitter page is: http://twitter.com/astrout.
POST SCRIPT: We did a panel as a follow up to this. A lot of interesting topics came up. Check it out.
Cross-posted on mzinga.com