Ignorant Twitter Bias and First Impressions

[David Jackson]

Have you ever met someone for the first time, and for whatever reason immediately decided that you didn't like that person? Then after getting to know the person, you discovered that he or she wasn't so bad after all?

Of course you have. We all have. Fair or not, it's human nature to form erroneous judgements and opinions about people we really don't know. And while it may be human nature to do this, it's also ignorant.

I was guilty of this type of ignorance myself recently - but not with a person, with an entity. I formed a negative opinion about Twitter, based on erroneous first impressions.

I had heard that Twitter was a silly waste of time, and not really a useful marketing tool. Because those opinions comported with my own negative opinion of Twitter, I bought into the negativity, and began badmouthing Twitter at every turn, instead of doing my own due diligence.

Finally, wanting to check things out for myself, I visited Twitter's website, and there they were - four words which would confirm my negative opinion about Twitter.

Those four words? "What are you doing?"

What are you doing? "Who cares what I'm doing, I thought to myself. I'm eating breakfast, that's what I'm doing. But who cares?"

Well, apparently millions of Twitter subscribers care about what other Twitter subscribers are doing, because Twitter has an estimated 10 million users worldwide.

And as impressive as those numbers are, it took having lunch with a good friend of mine to finally make me see the truth about Twitter. My friend showed me how Twitter had dramatically improved his financial bottom line. He showed me before and after numbers. He showed me cold, hard proof, and I became a believer.

Bottom line: I was wrong about Twitter, and I don't have a problem admitting that. Twitter is an excellent marketing and networking tool, which can be used to build relationships and promote virtually any type of business - profit or non-profit. You are limited only by your imagination.

As a result, I will be using Twitter myself this summer, when I launch my new website. I already have a million ideas about how to promote my business via Twitter. I can't wait to get started!

In the words of Dick Jones from Robo Cop... "Good business is where you find it!"

Follow me on Twitter @CustomerReviews

David Jackson

[angienewton]

Glad to hear you see the benefits of using Twitter. I like Twitter but there are a few things I don't like about it (like all the re-tweets, people who just post quote after quote and link after link, the follow fridays are clogging my list LOL oh and a few more things).

I don't know if Twitter is a benefit to my business because I'm not quite sure how to read stats yet but I'll have to check that out.

Looking forward to hearing how it works out for you this summer.

[David Jackson]

[angienewton]

[David Jackson]

[TorontoCarol]

I feel the same way Angie. I hate to stop following and offend them, but I do not like the way some of them talk. Shows that how you act on twitter can come back to haunt you. As a result of twitter comments made by a marketer in my local area that I formerly thought highly of, I would never want to do business with now.

[CaraM]

I recently read a great review/tutorial to manage twitter using TweetDeck. Saves me lots of time and frustration using it!
http://www.twitip.com/how-to-follow-alo ... tweetdeck/

[terrapin719]

[tknoppe]

[David Jackson]

[David Jackson]

[tknoppe]

I've discussed the follower/following thing quite a bit on my blog. Here's one such article that discusses my . These are 3 key things I look for before I follow someone. There are sometimes other reasons why I may follow someone, outside of these three things, like I found them via another Twitter conversation thread and I liked what they were tweeting, or they came highly recommended via someone else I respected or a number of other things - but these are my main 3 key checking points I look at before following most folks. Not fool-proof, but usually pretty accurate, and if there's ever an issue, I can always unfollow, but rarely have to by doing it this way.

[David Jackson]

[David Jackson]

[KarenMcG]