I have to admit that I did not understand Twitter until recently. I had a Twitter account for a long time but, I never understood what good these micro-blogs were. It just seemed like the Facebook status field extracted into its own thing. Of course,  it is quite a bit more sophisticated than that. I am now on Twitter everyday–I think I might be addicted!

At first glance Twitter is a little confusing. I didn’t understand what all the following and followers were about. Why would anyone follow me? That would be big marketing question to answer. What do you have to offer for people to follow your Tweets? It took me a while to understand Twitter slang and etiquette. I understand most of it now but, I’m sure there is still more for me to learn.

My main reason for using Twitter was to use it as a means to promote SuperTommy–me as a brand. My Twitter is @iamsupertommy. I’m also trying to become an expert in the field of interactive marketing so learning Twitter was going to be a must. I originally just went on and followed a couple of people who seemed interesting and made Tweets of my more recent blog posts.

I started replying to some people and looking at who the people I was following was following. My friend @wilpen–I actually know him in real life–has been using Twitter for a while so I was able to find a bunch of people who we mutually knew to follow as well. That was the basis for my Twitter network. The more you Tweet, the more people find you. I find myself looking at the most recent Twitter updates to see if anyone has anything interesting or if I have something to offer them.

Twitter search is also useful for finding people who is talking about specific topics and then following them. I did that for a few topics to find people to follow.

The best thing about Twitter outside of the networking is the amount of information that comes your way from the people you follow. I think I get better news from my Twitter feed than I do from reading the news. Since I am follow people who are Tweeting about topics I care about, the links they share are targeted and useful to me.

I am really liking Twitter right now and I think it is an incredibly powerful for spreading messages and ideas. You are welcome to follow me on Twitter!