Isn’t It Tweet?

Recently, I joined the Twitter world as a beginner, and in the smallest way possible. I had been putting it off, since I currently don’t own a laptop or a texting account on my cell phone. But the time had come to jump into the game.

At a blogging primer session in late June, I heard that one important, cost-free way to promote traffic to your blog is to tweet to your followers. So, now I tweet after each posting.

At the same time, two virtual groups I belong to were gathering Twitter account information from members. Once the lists were shared, I quickly had more followers.

And, I’ve heard from former colleagues and at several professional events that communicators are using Twitter as an additional way to keep the media and others updated on what their organizations are doing. Although the jury is still out on whether time spent on Twitter brings positive returns, it obviously has some value as a communications tool. It depends on how you use it and what you expect from it.

My personal view of Twitter has been that of a skeptic. Tweeting several times a day didn’t seem much different to me than incessant personal cell phone calls by people who seem addicted to it. Can they really have anything of value to say so often and for so long, day after day? What can I say on Twitter that isn’t wasting people’s time to read? What will add to their knowledge or build a bond that I wouldn’t put in an email instead? Should I tweet for the sake of tweeting?

These are all things I am contemplating. What do you think?