My 30 day Journey with Twitter

For most of you online, you know what Twitter is about, however, for those who are not familiar with it–Twitter is online service that allows people to communicate and remain in touch with each other by sending fast and simple replies to one question: What are you doing?

For me I would like the part of the mini-blogging tool. I was on a conference call with a group of my online friends and the mention of Twitter amongst other social media topic was brought up and my friend, Jenn Givler said something that really struck me. She said that she was apprehensive at first about Twitter wondering if it was a waste of time and just another way for others to spam each other however she said, “The thing I like about Twitter is it provides us whom who work online the opportunity similar to those offline in offices where they have a chance to chat throughout the day.” I thought that was a great way of summarizing Twitter. You get to have the opportunity to “check in” on your friends to see what they are doing during the day.

Of course by the title of this post, My 30 day Journey with Twitter, I was not one of those who jumped into Twitter when it first started. You may be saying, “Why Teresa?” My reasons are few but common.

1) Fear of it being a HUGE waster of my time. As an entrepreneur, I figured I had so much to do already did I really want or NEED to get into another social media (I will address the answer to this shortly).

2) Another place others would have the opportunity to spam me. Again I figured I had more important things to do than having to be bothered with being involved in Twitter. (I will address the answer to this too shortly).

However, more and more people I knew online were on Twitter and my interest peaked. And since my business focus was moving from virtual assistant toward online promotion management, I figured this was definitely something I needed to sink my teeth into to find out what the “fuss” was all about.
Finally, one day I asked our own Sparkplug CEO, Wendy Piersall, “Do you feel that Twitter really helps grow a business?”
Now, let me say, this was a pivitol point that she made when she answered me, because I think it makes a big difference not only to being on Twitter but any social media or networking group. Wendy asked me a question back. She said, “Well, it depends on what you goal is for being on Twitter?” My answer to her was to grow relationships. Great thing to have your goal in mind BEFORE you join a network or group.

I am going to sidebar for a moment here—-> By focusing on your goals it allows you a clearer vision of actions you will be taking on the path. And don’t ignore the reasoning behind the actions you take— whether they are right or wrong. When you take the correct actions, you will get to the next step quicker. Even when you take the wrong step or make a incorrect action, you have the opportunity to learn and grow from the mistake and create process improvements in your business.

Ok, got off there a bit. Back to my 30 day journey. So, I joined Twitter on June 25th. To sign up was really simple, I just had a place in my email and a password and off I went. Well, I had told Wendy, of course, I was on Twitter so I knew to follow her. Then I had another friend of mine, Carol Deckertwhom I told and I added her as well. So there I went, adding my friends (using the Find & Follow tab at the top of the page). At first I added the people I knew really well, and the fun part was that people started following me too. whoohoo!

The next thing I had gotten used to executing were the actual “tweets” (the posts only 140 characters long). It took me a bit to get used to that as well. But I think one piece of advice I think is to make it about what you are doing but it can be also about a new article you read or a great blog your found…and share it with your following!

Last week, or it could have been about 10 days ago, I received a tweet from one of my followers, Jennifer Gneidecki who mentioned about a new Twitter application called Ping.fm. So, what is Ping.fm you may ask? Ping.fm will allow you to post an url to different social applications such as Twitter (and Facebook, Linked In, and others) in ONE application instead of having to go into them individually. Very nice.

Ok so for the final numbers—
after 30 days I have
I am following 68 people
I am being followed by 37 people
(side note here–> some people may be saying, well Teresa you don’t have alot of people following you…however, to me it is about the quality and taking time to develop those relationships)

What have I learned or seen as a benefit of Twitter:
1) It is a easy and quick way to let those who wish to know…what I am doing during the day whether is it just a simple shout to someone else or to let them know about my newest adventures.
2) It is another great way to develop relationships with others.

So, I have enjoyed my 30 day journey on Twitter. I hope you will try it soon too if you haven’t already.

P.S. Here is my Twitter Id