Wednesday, April 11, 2012

#Twitter 103: Why bother?

The path I'm taking with Twitter means a lot of hard-slogging work. A lot of folks ask, 'Why bother?'. And in fact, I can already see that most folks don't bother. And won't!

I was going to address this later on in the series, but since a list of reasons was just handed to me (in a Tweet, natch), and since it's good form to be well-motivated before tackling a project like this, I'll just repeat them below:

Here are 15 reasons why you need to get started building and growing a significant and relevant network on Twitter:

1. To have access to a group of people that you can refer to for advice 24/7.
2. To generate targeted traffic to your sites and portfolio. The larger your network, the more people will visit your site (if the site is of interest and of relevance to them).
3. To develop friendships and relations with people you otherwise might never have met.
4. To add credibility to your brand, your business and your website.
5. To expand your pool of potential collaborators.
6. As a means to introduce your work to large numbers of people who are already interested in you, without disturbing those that are not.
7. To build your online presence as an industry leader.
8. To widen the net of potential new clients who pick up on your work.
9. As a means to gather feedback on your projects from around the world almost instantly.
10. As a way for your updates to easily be shared, and even go viral within the Twitter system.
11. To let people who are interested keep up to date with you wherever you are in the world, for free, in real time without the need to write long posts.
12. For people to see your human side beyond your more regimented portfolio updates.
13. To refer or be referred by others easily and efficiently.
14. To help your own creativity and spark new ideas from updates that you see.
15. To boost and grow your social interaction for those who tend to work independently.

Of course all this needs to be done in a legitimate, organic manner that is congruent with the people you are interacting with. It’s not about spamming, aggressive following, being manipulative or being destructive.
Growing your network should be a gradual process, that introduces you and what you stand for to the people who want to know about you in the first place.

Well-said. Now, this enterprising fellow has a Twitter booklet to sell. Seeing as he handed me this post, I'll let him do it.

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