In a quest to better organize my social media presence, I’ve been having an internal debate about the merits of Twitter. I love Instagram, and you can find me pinning and perusing on Pinterest fairly often. However, Twitter seems to come and go in phases for me; I’ll use it for a few days, then not again for months. Lately, I’ve considered getting rid of it all together.
Rather than continuing this “To tweet or not to tweet” conversation in my head, I thought I’d do a little crowd-sourcing to see your thoughts on the little blue bird of few words. Here’s my current list of Twitter pros and cons.
To tweet:
- Instant gratification. Often when you tweet a person or a brand, they respond back right away. To ask a simple question or to give a shoutout to someone who has done something notable, Twitter is the quickest, easiest way to go.
- Communication. Although it’s possible to have real-time conversations through blog comments and Instagram, Twitter takes the crown for best real-time conversation platform. I believe that’s why there are Twitter Chats and not Instagram- or Pinterest- chats.
- Sharing. Twitter may not be the only way to share a blog post, article, or video that you love, but I think it’s by far the easiest and quickest.
Not to tweet:
- It’s overwhelming. I can’t scroll through Twitter like Instagram or Facebook. As soon as I read the newest tweet there are 3 more that have just posted. The constant need to refresh makes me crazy. Can’t. Keep. Up.
- It seems meaningless. This may sound a little harsh, but I feel like tweeting seems pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things. When I share a blog post or a photo on Instagram, I’m sharing a bit of myself, of my family, or even just my day, and it’s there on display, at least for a little while. With twitter, I share something and if you don’t catch it in one to three minutes it’s as if I didn’t share anything at all. Twitter = one big black hole.
- It’s not my go-to. When I first got into blogging, there was this sense of “must use all the social media!” that has turned into “just use a few, but be consistent”. I like this direction, and it’s pretty much been my excuse to not tweet ever. When I want to share something or connect with someone, Twitter just isn’t the place I first go to.
- 140 Character limit. You can see where I’d have problems with that.
What do you think; would you add to or elaborate on this list? Are you a Twitter user? How/when do you use it?