Bretts Marketing Bytes

I can’t tell you how many times a day I hear “I don’t get twitter” or “twitter is lame” or “I don’t see a use for it.” Does this sound familiar? If you answered yes, you are not alone.

The reason why twitter is so confusing to most people is because it is a vague product/service. It is one of those things that has no true meaning or usefulness until you give it meaning or usefulness. It doesn’t just come naturally; it takes a little thinking on your part to make it work for you.

Why some people think it is lame.
Let’s pretend it is your first attempt at twitter. You chose your username, created your account and are ready to write something. Then you sit there… uhh ok, now what? You ask yourself “what do I say?” Not sure what to write you decide to see what others are writing. Naturally your first thought is to look at someone’s profile that you know. Let’s say it’s your cousin. On his twitter page he talks about how he just took the dog outside, cut the lawn and is now cooking a steak dinner. At this point, you start thinking… Why is this important? You get frustrated and give up thinking twitter is useless. Does this sound about right? This is the average initial experience on twitter.
I suppose if I had no followers and the initial tweets that I viewed were about my cousin taking the dog for a walk, I would think it is pretty lame too. But guess what?

Just because your cousins page was lame doesn’t mean that everyone else’s is too. In fact, there are a lot of great people that I follow that provide me with useful information. Here are just a few non lame uses for twitter.

• There is a traveling burrito truck that tweets their location so you know when they are in your neighborhood.
• Firefighters tweet their location. This replaces the scanner.
• Business associations talk about upcoming events.
• Concert holders build hype around upcoming concerts.
• Subject matter experts talking about something YOU , yes YOU are interested in, whether it be cooking, travel, fishing, bowling, skiing, hiking, knitting, drinking, walking, music, movies, dogs, cats, kids, homes… You get the idea.
• Famous entertainers and sports stars talk about their lives. Why do we care? Don’t know, but we do.
• Regular people just like your cousin who tweets about taking out their dog.
• Large corporations using it for customer service.
• Companies use it to get the word out about sales or specials.

My point here is that there are a lot of people writing interesting things out there. Find them! Think about it in a different way and I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed once you get started.

Happy Tweeting!

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