So you have gone through the process and set up a Twitter account, now what?

What do you talk (or Tweet) about? This is the situation that most people I know find themselves in after they get onto Twitter. Does anyone really care that you are eating a jelly doughnut and drinking coffee – probably not. And it is at this moment that you may think all of this Twitter frenzy is ridiculous and decide you want nothing to do with it. And if you do, that could be a huge mistake. You see, just like any other social environment, you need to determine what Twitter is to you, find your voice and start interacting.

Instead of thinking about Twitter as a highly restrictive email (or blogging) environment, think of it like the world’s largest cocktail party where you can listen in to as many conversations as you want to (following) and interject a view, opinion or something useless (status) at any time for others to listen to. But before you jump in (or out) too quickly, you need to decide how Twitter will exist in your world and what your voice will be.

For Example:
You could simply be the Mute – You could choose to follow a person, topic, whatever really and use a great tool like TweetDeck to monitor what people are saying in real-time. And real-time is the key here, you are listening to what is being said now, not an hour ago – because of this real-time nature of the dialogue, my wife told me about the Swine flu problem before the major media outlets reported on it. It is OK to just listen – this is a valid way to use Twitter to keep up on current opinions, etc…

You could be the Expert – You may choose to follow people related to an area of expertise that you have and inject comments, links, photo’s etc. related to that topic. Using Twitter like this allows you to monitor your subject area while voicing your opinion (or expertise) when appropriate and you actually add to the dialogue that is going on.

You could be the Socialite – You could tweet about the people you are hanging out with and actually use Twitter to expand your social network beyond the physical and actively interact with geographically diverse people in a simple, convenient way. Twitter becomes an extension of your social network and you may share “Getting coffee or Eating lunch” comments, but folks probably won’t mind. Considering Twitter was originally created to allow individuals to group text their friends with “What they were doing” so people could choose to participate or not – this use of Twitter is probably closest to the founders original idea for it.

You don’t have to adopt just one of these Voices, but by thinking about how you want to interact with Twitter (and the Twitter Community) before you get started will make you time with Twitter more rewarding and useful.

What are your thoughts?

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