Twitter - I just don't get it

I first engaged with Twitter about 18 months ago, because I thought I ought to learn what it was and what it could potentially offer my clients. I figured people would be asking me about Twitter soon enough and even if they didn't, I needed to be prompting them to consider it as part of a social media marketing strategy. I didn't set out to be a social media champion. SM thought leadership is the province of deeper thinkers than I – try the brilliant @markwschaefer and his blog, {grow} for a start. I wanted to know 'just enough'.

I don't know if it hasn't caught on (yet) in the UK the way it has in the USA, or if it is the nature of my client base, but in the last 18 months, not one of my clients has ever asked me about Twitter. More than that, when I bring it up with clients in the context of developing a social media strategy as part of their general marketing, what I get is blank stares and looks that scream, 'oh no, not another thing to think about'.

But I persisted with Twitter because I felt I should, not because I particularly warm to the mini-message environment. I never intended it to happen, but I found that hours and hours were being leeched from my day in pursuit of thought-provoking content, signposted in one Twitter message after another. Much of what I found was indeed fascinating – plenty of insightful, forward-thinking and analytical writing. Oh yes, and a whole load of funny and diverting stuff too – the sort of stuff I ask people not to send me on email as I don't want to be distracted by it. Yet there I was, distracting myself, time and again, every day, following the breadcrumb trail from one blogger to another.

I participated here and there too, engaging in 'the conversation'. Interacting is a great thing to do, especially when you work solo, as I do. I'm not knocking it. But when it comes to time spent versus return, the argument for Twitter – for me at least – got a bit flaky. One day it got to me. I thought, what on earth am I doing with this? What's it doing for me? What's it doing to me? Where is it taking me?  What I was doing wasn't working for me - I had to take a new approach.

Clearly Twitter has been a great leap forward for many businesses and it's clear to me that I just don’t get it in the way they do. But I’m not a technophobe and I do have more than half a brain. So what am I missing? Until I get it, I’m just another business professional feeling their way with new technology, not wholly convinced that it isn't just a great big song-and-dance about nothing - a suit sewn from invisible thread - and a great big insidious way to claim time from us all, under the misplaced notion that we cannot afford to be left behind.

25th Nov 2010