Hello folks, it's Richard! Life held me captive for some time, but I managed to escape and am back in the forum. Something else that captured me is social media, especially Twitter. Do I really need Twitter? What is the real benefit? I follow people, they follow me, but I haven't received any "real" benefit from using it. Has anyone out there received any "real" tangible benefit from Twitter? Please share 
Do you really need to useTwitter?
(10 posts) (6 voices)
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Richard
MemberPosted 1 year ago # -
Hi Richard
It really depends on how you use Twitter.....ideally, it should drive traffic to your site, so you should be including a link in most of your tweets. It's also important to connect with people, so your tweets should never be too 'spammy' sounding - if you use it only as a one-way marketing channel, people will not follow you for long.
Lastly, be sure that you're cultivating retweets by keeping tweets short but valuable, and retweet what those you follow send out, which will encourage them to retweet what you send out.
All that said, don't let it take over your life - set aside some time each day but don't get so focused on it that it's all you do.....
Posted 1 year ago # -
Just to play devils advocate for the sake of debating, I'd argue that you using Twitter may not help. I look at it more as a time/traffic analysis, in which I'd rather spend time developing great content that search engines will pick up instead of always relying on Twitter to drive traffic. The traffic that originates from Twitter really only lasts for a few days while a properly SEOed article will continue to drive great traffic because it ranks high in search engine results.
I also feel that articles that are submitted to StumbleUpon/Digg/Delicious are also great methods to drive traffic.
Now I know some will argue that Twitter is all about the 'conversation' but sometimes I just feel that there is way to much 'spam' out there with people posting irrelevant links and thoughts.
I personally listen to Twitter and post relevant articles once every few days, but I'm all about guest posting here on TWE and Matador. I know those backlinks will help my search engine results as well as writing helpful/useful content.
Just my two cents...
Posted 1 year ago # -
I mainly use Twitter to connect with people. I post relevant links and information that I find each day. Do I pay attention to the posts? If they're interesting I will. It's not important for me to know that "you're eating a mouth-watering cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla milkshake ... TMI ...
Posted 1 year ago # -
Richard
MemberThanks for the update! I've been on the laptop for way too long these days. I'm creating a schedule and sticking to it. You can lose yourself in social media because you think you "have to do it" because everyone else is doing it, and I don't want to lose my lion's share. I think I'll spend about 15 minutes each day, unless I have something really important to post!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Excellent point Bryan! I do agree that for keeping steady traffic growth you're far better off to focus on good content and using good SEO techniques. I have tried to pull back from Twitter a bit lately, primarily because it's become too much of a time-drain, but I do think it's a good way to announce what's new at your site (posts or changes) and just in general keep in touch with some folks.
By the way, I'd love to have another guest post from you!
And Rebecca I agree with you too - I usually unfollow someone if they send out too many irrelevant tweets - like you I really don't care what people are eating or listening too or what their kids are doing.....I try to follow people who are travel writers or in the travel industry because what's going on in Travel is what I'm interested in...
Posted 1 year ago # -
I say yes, absolutely. Twitter is free, easy-to-use, and even if you only occasionally "tweet", it offers a lot of benefits. It's easy to network, get in touch with other people in the industry, keep tabs of what's going on, and, most importantly, it's a great way to broadcast your own work - nearly half of my traffic comes from Twitter (and I owe a lot of that to people like Trisha, who retweet my articles). All in all, it definitely offers a worthwhile return on your investment of time.
Posted 1 year ago # -
What I have noticed on Twitter is that if you follow a lot of people you also get a lot of tweets.
I have just started out on Twitter and so far only follow 14 people, but even so the amount of tweets I get is enormous. No way I can read them all, so often I don't scroll down to the bottom to catch up with where I left off the day before. Because of that I probably miss out on important tweets.To me it has always seemed that Twitter was set up for people with blackberries etc, who are connected to the internet day and night. I am only connected to the internet when my computer is on, which on certain days might be as much as 7 hours and on other days only one hour. And even when my computer is on I usually only sign in on Twitter for 5 minutes and then sign out again.
In this light I think the retweet are very important, because if someone retweets your link it comes up at the top again.
Posted 1 year ago # -
This is why I do a "Monthly Travel Tweet" recap on the first of each month on Tourfolio.com to list some of the great travel tweets that people might have missed.
You can easily get lost and caught up in the 'conversations' on Twitter, which is why I agree with Trisha that you really should limit the time because it's easily a drain for productivity on your travel writing.
Posted 1 year ago # -
I do agree with Geraldine (@everywhereist, who is laugh-out-loud funny and everyone should be reading her blog).....even if you only occasionally tweet, you'll see some benefit from it, mainly from the retweets.
Maria, I know what you mean about so many tweets to read - it's very hard to keep up with everyone that you want to keep up with.....there are some people that I would like to follow but don't, because they tweet so often that it's overwhelming.
What I do that makes it a little easier is to use a Twitter client (I prefer Seesmic Desktop) and I have a list of my "faves" - a dozen or so out of the 240+ people I follow - it keeps tweets from those people open in a separate column so I can better keep up with them.....do I still miss stuff? Yep, but I don't stress about it any more - I just try to read some posts here and there, comment on (and tweet) the ones I really like, and retweet whatever I can.......
I give myself an hour or so for reading blogs and tweeting in the morning, and the same later on in the day. Sometimes when I'm having lunch at my desk I'll check Twitter again and retweet some more stuff from others....
Posted 1 year ago #
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