Maybe it's my problem. Maybe my use of Twitter has grown stale. Maybe the downtime Twitter had on Thursday was a good thing for everyone.
Is it just me or is Twitter getting boring?
I mean, I have my Tweetdeck. And I have my filters. And I spend my time squashing the pornsters, quotaholics, follow-me, seo, teeth-whitening followers with abandon. But something is not coming back with all the time and effort I'm putting in.
So the followers are up. (Thank you very much, I hope that I continue to provide tweets of value.) And I am still as committed as ever to providing educational and funny tidbits. But more and more I am finding opening my Tweetdeck for a bit'o'Twitter is less and less rewarding.
A couple conversations I had this week have started me thinking about Twitter a little differently.
1. I met with a potential client who wanted to jump start their local business with "social media." During part of our discussion she said, "A couple people have said they would do my Twitter for me." I lit up a bit. "I think that's the wrong use of Twitter. Lot's of people are using Twitter for everything, but not every business needs a Twitter strategy. I guess you could do the Dell thing and use Twitter as an RSS feed pumping out the "deals" via Twitter and calling it a social media success. And yes Dell is nearing a million followers, but what are those people looking for? They are not listening to a voice or a personality. They are subscribed to a coupon network. I guess that's cool if that's what you're into. But I don't think that's a valid strategy for most businesses."
2. The second conversation was with a friend who is not sure about Twitter at all. "So why do so many people subscribe to your Twitter?" he asked as we talked about what I've been working on. I told him about my Twitter rants and how I've been self-evaluating and trying to do a better job. Actually working to add value to with my Tweets. "And of course I use it to promote some of my writings. I can't tell you how cool it is to tweet about something I've just written and watch the incoming traffic going to my blog and reading the post. Man, self-publishing in the old days wasn't this cool. Talk about instant feedback!"
Okay, so as an individual Twitter is about authenticity and voice. If all you are doing is talking about "what are you doing?" as in, "going to get a diet coke" and "heading to lunch with friends" then the quality of your tweetstream is fairly low. But if you think about adding value, if you imagine your followers as potential friends and readers not marketing targets then there is a lot you can do with a shiny new Twitter ID. But it's not for everyone.
So how can I get re-energized about Twitter? What is missing? In trying to figure out who to feature as my ONE #FollowFriday post it was hard to think of more than a handful of tweeters that actually enlighten and surprise me on a regular basis. There is an art to the short form. And often I will RT (ReTweet) any posts that I think are awesome. The funniest was Friday night.
"Hi my name is Bill and I'm an OVERTWEETER. (where's the donuts?)"
I seriously couldn't stop laughing after that one. So I retweeted and started a funny conversation with the author.
And do you notice that at different times of day there are different type of Twitter conversations going on. I find that late at night the conversations actually start happening. Almost like IM conversations. People exchanging a lot more than during the day. It's almost like a in club. Check it out, after 10 pm on weekdays. And around midnight the hard core social media folks are still on. And you can strike up some amazing conversations via Twitter.
I guess that's what I'm missing is conversations. Most of Twitter these days seems to be blasting messages. I really hate it when a friend starts hyping some product or some new conference or service. It's not like the companies don't have enough options to message me.
So I'll see what I can do to get more conversational on Twitter. And of course I'll keep writing the posts and working on the Twitter books. You do the same.
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/bored-tweetless
Check out The Twitter Way for all Twitter philosophy you care to eat.
NYTimes has a new post about Paid-to-Tweet issues: Tweeting for Dollars
