I love following artists, thinkers, and biz folks on Twitter, but my favorite uses for Twitter are:
Roadwork – I follow the Colorado Department of Transportation to keep up with road closings due to accidents, roadwork, and weather. LOVE it.
Local news – I follow CBS 4 Denver to get the latest headlines. I usually don’t need more than this.
Customer Service – If I want a company to know that I’m dissatisfied, I find them on Twitter. I try not to be mean or unreasonable, but I get more satisfaction using Twitter than an online comment form. Tweet and they perk up.
Likewise: When I really like what a company is doing, I go out of my way to praise them on Twitter. I’ve done this recently with Frontier Airlines, 1Password, and Evernote. I need to do it more often.
What do you find most gratifying about using Twitter?
Favorite Twitter Uses?
- Alyson Stanfield
Share this post
8 thoughts on “Favorite Twitter Uses?”
I love meeting new people & sharing information & learning from them back…I wanted to mention that I recently purged all my 1500 or so following because it seemed that the more people I followed, the less I listened…I am starting again with a tiny group & plan to move much more slowly forward, getting to know a few Twitterers at a time, then only adding more when I know the ones I already have…I used http://www.ManageFlitter.com to sort through this mind set…(very helpful)…
I wonder if CT has a twitter account for road work…
I did interact with the findings supplier Rings and Things when they introduced a new product for which I had an idea they never thought of. I tweeted my idea and after some communications ended up with some samples to try it out. My Bubbe Pins(TM) are the result of this.
Like Sari, I prefer to follow fewer more relevant people than everyone in sight. But I haven’t had a utility to help weed out the irrelevant ones. So thanks, Sari for the link – I’m going to give them a try!
Love that tip about Customer Service! The “tweeting” will certainly get their attention 🙂
Definitely the amazing conversations I have with people but I also use Twitter to keep up with local news. I also use Twitter as a testing area for product ideas.
I should probably be embarrassed at how much I love Twitter 🙂
I don’t automatically follow anyone but check out their streams first to make sure it’s something I want in my life. Positive people who aren’t just tweeting links all the time and share a bit of their lives are the gold standard for me. Also, the folks in the “making social media social” group #msms are a pretty fun group.
I just joined twitter a few weeks ago after learning about it in an art marketing workshop put on by @theArtEngine. I started following the editor of Southwest Art magazine and she posted something saying she was looking for figurative artists. I replied to her tweet with info on two friends of mine that are figurative artists and she is now featuring both of them in the January issue! On top of that I got saw a repost from a gallery looking for new artists to show and I landed myself a solo show! Not bad for a few weeks on twitter! Twitter is a powerful tool!
I definitely need to be more proactive about finding the right people to follow and not just those who are simply also artists or in a guild that I am in or just because they followed me first.
Excellent anecdotal evidence that Twitter is not (necessarily) a waste of time!
Just to chime in, from the other side of the conversation we had with Patricia V.: Rings & Things loves Twitter because…it’s one of the few ways available to keep in touch with our customer friends, who are located literally all over the USA and worldwide. Very few other tools make it so easy to keep up with people’s ideas, needs and requests! It was tremendous fun to quickly build on a productive idea with Patricia, and it’s such a win-win for us & our customers when things like that happen. Mind you, we’re following something like 9,000 people, so we obviously can’t track every word that’s said (and some folks primarily tweet to promote their Etsy etc. businesses)…but we always paying attention and ready to respond. Getting all this for free from Twitter is a heck of gift that we’re really grateful for!
🙂 Dave at Rings & Things