Ok, so I’ve been tweeting for a month or 2 now, and aside form an initial brain pain trying to figure out the true purpose of Twitter, I’m now starting to see the value. 

My first thought about Twitter was, why would anybody want to follow me? Should I tweet everything I’m doing throughout the day? Do people really care? The answer is probably an overwhelming NO, and this has led me to a couple of observations about my Twitter habits, and the true value…

There are 2 types of people I follow. People I know personally, and people/brands who I don’t know but share common interests. There is a 3rd category I’ll mention later.

For people I know, it doesn’t matter what they tweet. Because I can easily associate a personal image with tweeter, it’s relevant and not an intrusion. Even if the tweet is something like ‘sitting down to eat my cornflakes’. Whooped Dee Doo. No Harm, no Foul because they’re a buddy.

For those I don’t know, I’m following them for a reason. For example, I follow TUAW (The Unnofficial Apple Weblog), primarily because I’m an Apple fanatic, and I find all Apple news to be pretty interesting.

I tried following some other users for awhile (yup, Even Ashton Kutcher), and this is where I fell off the rails at first. I kept asking myself, why do I care what Ashton Kutcher is thinking about right now? I really don’t. 2 problems here, … I don’t know him personally, and we don’t share any common interests. The same goes for a few others that I’ve since deleted. 

There is a certain tweet trust that is built between the common interest tweeter and tweetie. As long as they post ‘as advertised’, and stick to what they are all about, then it’s all good. TUAW won’t start telling us what they had for breakfast (I hope), they’ll stick to the mac facts. I tweet trust them. 

Recently started following a well know radio host. I like his commentary, and have listened to him off an on for years. I noticed something highly irritating about his twitter feed though,… He’ll post a headline about ANYTHING! We’re talking news, weather, stock market updates, you name it. This isn’t what he’s know for, so why bother tweeting everything? He broke the tweet trust, because he creates so much ‘static’, I skim over his tweets. Bad for him I guess. 

The point here is this. If you are a business, celeb, special interest etc,… tweet the things that are relevant to YOUR brand / persona. That’s what people are into. Don’t just rebroadcast the world, that’s what CNN is for (incidentally, the 3rd category). 

The true value is building a solid network of tweetaholics who feed you with relevant timely information about the things you like. It’s also nice to keep up with what your friend are up to if they’re so inclined to post they hourly status updates. Ultimately, it takes awhile to find your Tweetspot. (TM, all rights reserved)  ;)