Twitter dee dee- The Power of Twitter

I've been meaning to post on my Twitter experience to date and a tweet by Anthony Bradley (@bradleyanthonyj) to his blog post on Why People Don't Get Twitter drove me to action.

My social media experience was limited to Facebook until this past June. Even now, I post a status update there maybe once every few weeks, and use it primarily to play Mafia Wars. (I still don't think my life is that interesting.) Then I attended a Writer's Digest webinar on "Identify and Pitch the Right Markets for Your Work" hosted by Robert Brewer (@robertleebrewer) and Alice Pope (@alicepope). This webinar completely opened my eyes to the power of social media networks like Twitter.

Robert and Alice invited the webinar participants to follow them on Twitter, and I finally had a reason to check out this strange microblogging thing I'd heard so much about. I realized that there were probably a lot of people in the writing industry using this tool to talk about their work, their successes, and sharing resources to help others. I didn't have to pay a dime for access to this invaluable information- the only thing I needed to do was figure out how to follow the right people!

I pulled out my latest Writer's Digest magazine and went to town. I searched for every editor, writer, and author mentioned. I was pleasantly surprised to find many of them in the Twitterverse. I pulled out another writing magazine and did the same thing. I started diving into all of these great tweets, and then paid attention to who the people I was following followed, and I added people from there. In addition, I started getting people following me as I braved the world of RT.

I have been incredibly selective about who I chose to follow, and it is paying off in dividends. I have pages upon pages of informative articles, blogs, and quotes at my fingertips everytime I login.

As I've moved my attention from the writing trade to the specific topic of leadership and leadership development, I created a new Twitter profile to follow those industry experts. (Again, it just takes paying attention to who is out there discussing the topics on their blogs- many tweet too.) Then it was just a matter of finding the right kind of tool (like TweetDeck) to help me manage my profiles.

I think Twitter is a powerful tool if you chose to use it strategically. Like anything else, it is what you make of it.