25 Reasons Why Someone Should Join Twitter

Twitter is getting alot of exposure in the media, and recently posted a news that it has attracted over 14 million users this past month. Twitter is HOT, and if you are not on it, you are missing the free lemonade in a hot sunny day. Well, I was kinda ticked off at twitter for a while, but I recently decided to restart my way into twitter. I am making more contacts getting to know more people and enjoying the benefits. Well I think it is so important at this point, that I am making a whole category devoted to twitter which I plan to write on for a few weeks at least, so you will be seeing alot of articles related to twitter on Balkhis. I asked all of my followers and friends to tell me why someone should join twitter, and I have picked some good responses which you will see in the post.

1. It helps to make Connections

Twitter is one tool that will help you make connections with users that you will never have known before existed. You can get to know a whole different side of a person. You can know more about me by following me on twitter rather than just reading my blog post. Twitter is the key to make another door of connection. You might not be able to ever get to know me or have me link to your post because I don’t know you, but twitter lets you do that. Twitter lets you talk to people. I can ramble on and on, but I hope you get my point. If you don’t then Andrew Chuang puts it best.

“You should join Twitter to strengthen existing bonds, and make new ones.” ~ @Tsuyomaru

2. Quick Support

With the speed twitter is growing, more and more businesses are creating their user accounts. They are even hiring a person who is on their twitter account tweeting back at their customers. So sometimes you might not even get a response through your email, but you will be able to hear back a response through twitter. This works if you want to connect with top bloggers and marketers as well. These guys have insane amount of emails to go through daily, so your email will be ignored, but tweets since they are only 140 characters, they will respond because it doesn’t take them very long. You can get quick support if you join twitter.

“Twitter is a valuable and underestimated research tool; u can increase your “web of influence” & exchange with thought leaders” ~ @blogbrevity

3. Good Learning Tool

You can never have too much knowledge. Specially if you are a designer like me. Half of the people that I am following are designers. I see so many great articles and resources that help me improve designing skills daily. No matter what your niche is there is always someone there for your niche, and there is always resources for you. And if there is not, then man you are lucky because you can capitalize the zone, and take full benefit from the newcomers.

“Why join twitter? B/c I learn so much from the 20 or so people I follow.” ~ @lnxwalt

4. To Keep UP

No matter what you are trying to keep up with, twitter has the latest info of it. From technology to breaking news, you can find it all on twitter. Heck the earthquake in Italy was first reported on twitter before it was on CNN. You can follow the web trends, news, special sites, and more by being on twitter. As a webmaster, or just as a normal person, you don’t want to fall behind. So to keep up you should join twitter.

“I was completely skeptical. I joined reluctantly, to keep up w. web trends. Now, I enjoy it. (Despite being a bit intimidated)” ~ @lt3design

5. It’s the Next Big Thing

I don’t know if you notice, but twitter is everywhere. It’s on the web, it’s on the news channels, it’s in commercials, it’s in paper media such as newspaper. It is taking over the world right now like facebook and myspace did at once. If you are one of those people who joins things because it is the next big thing, then this is your chance. Twitter is the next big thing that you should join because everyone is here.

“You should join Twitter because it’s the next big thing.” ~ @JohnChow

6. It Helps Your Creativity

Marketing is all about being creative. Creative campaigns are short and sticky. That is how your tweets are suppose to be also. 140 characters max. You have to get your point across and if you want others to read it, you got to make it interesting. Basically it is an ultimate practice for you to elevate your pitch. No one likes to read a whole page of boring proposals. The best proposals I have agreed to were short and they had very catchy headlines. Twitter is a practice for you to write better and creative headlines, so after a while you will be a better blogger due to twitter because it is helping your post titles.

“You get pretty damn creative saying what’s on your mind in 140 char or less!” ~ @danib3

7. You can Share Your Knowledge

People join forums to share their expertise with those who are in the need of help. I comment on wordpress support forums for the sole reason of helping because wordpress is such an awesome script. Well you can share your knowledge and expertise on twitter one to one except this way, you can build a long lasting relationship rather than saying oo I know this person because he once helped me, you can become really good friends.

“For the opportunity to expand your knowledge and to share your expertise with others in ways that weren’t possible before.” ~ @jccameron

8. You can interact with your readers and get advices

Everyone need advices and suggestions. Well twitter is the best place to get these suggestions. You can interact with your readers ask them questions about your upcoming posts. Get suggestions and ideas from them about what they would like to see and so on. You can have them review your new product as a beta users. Twitter is the best way to get beta testers also for free majorly. Your users would love to try beta testers, but you only want exclusive ones, well you know how each user is because you know them on twitter. So you can contact them exclusively if need be rather than sending out a mass email asking for testers. This way you make your reader feel that they are valued at your website or blog, and their opinion counts. Win Win for both ends.

“To keep in touch with my blog readers and forum buddies” ~ @WorldsDresser

9. General Research / Surveys

You can ask random questions like I did with my followers why should someone join twitter and it helped me get this post together. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your blog readers. Open ended questions like this can be answered by anyone who sees it on twitter which makes your possibilites infinite. Twitter is a great tool for asking poll type questions.

10. To Get Jobs

O you thought that sites like monster.com or newspapers were the only place you could get jobs? Actually people are now tweeting about what they need. For instance Jim Kukral wanted help from a WordPress Expert and I replied to him and helped him out. Just like that people would tweet like: Need a new wordpress design, looking for designers, and you can just respond to the tweet and you just got yourself a job. Twitter is opening possibilites for everyone.

11. Get Traffic To Your Website

Twitter is the best place to promote your product or website right now because it is hot. With so many new tools now, you can easily get your new blog posts or new products get acrossed to thousands of new people every day. I mean just two days ago, one of my posts was retweeted 50 times, and I got around 2000 visitors from it. Which is very nice because normally, I would’ve seen around 500 to 1000 visitors. Twitter really helps boost traffic to your website and increase exposure.

“Great tool to network with others, market/advertise your business/website, and there’s ton of info to learn about from followers.” ~ @Schlossy

12. Get Social Media Benefits

Eventhough twitter itself is a social media network, by posting your urls on twitter, you are increasing your article’s chances to be submitted to other social media sites like Digg or stumbleupon. I know two of my articles were submitted to Digg by one of the powerdiggers, and they almost hit FP because both had over 100+ diggs. One of my article was submitted to Stumbleupon by a reputable user, and it received tons of traffic from there. You can ask all your friends to digg for you specially if you are a webmaster because there are alot of webmasters there.

“cuz there are lots of webmasters in here” ~ @atif089

13. Big SEO Advantage

Twitter gives you a big SEO Advantage because if you see almost all twitter pages rank really high for their keywords. I mean when I type Syed Balkhi, twitter comes up second or third usually. Which goes onto show that you can use twitter to help your seo with the keyword on your profile.

14. It Sparks New Ideas

For an entrepreneur, an idea is worth millions. Well twitter is giving it to you for free. Often times, you will get ideas from the most irrelevant talks. Or maybe relevant talks. I believe that thoughts inspire thoughts. When you read another person’s thoughts on twitter, you can have your own creative ones, and one of them could be a million dollar idea that you have been waiting for. You should use twitter as a trend where web and society in general is shifting towards, and come up with ideas to target the most amount of users in a better way. This is the sole reason why alot of companies are joining twitter because they want to see what their audience think, and they want to keep up with the trend.

15. It’s Free and Fun

Twitter is like a free way of sending group sms to your friends. I just can’t describe how much fun twitter can be. If you want a hobby online. You are tired of facebook and others, then try twitter. It is a good distraction that you get from your current tasks although it can be sometimes when you need to be focused. It’s like a random instant messages and people follow you based on your messages, so you have enormous amount of friends. The possibilites if twitter touches the horizon. It is basically like a world wide forum where you are the moderator.

16. Twitter is a substitute to Digg

You thought digg was interesting huh because of the cool links that you were seeing. Twitter can be a substitute to digg. You just follow the right people like @mlane, and RichardLaksana. They send me more interesting articles than digg design can ever see. Because the fact is you won’t see half the most interesting articles on digg because the articles that you see on digg are popular made by powerdiggers, so it is just a view of powerdiggers. And believe it or not alot of these articles are from selected sites that make the top of digg anyways. Such as Smashingmagazine, Nettuts, and so on. Not often that you will see a smaller blog hit the FP because they don’t have enough popularity. Digg is a popularity contest, whereas twitter is more like a quality contest. If your article is deemed worthy, then people will Retweet it even those who are not your friends or know you.

17. It’s a Good Place to Vent

Hey if you don’t know all the security features of a blog and how to make it private, so you can vent. Twitter is really easy to do so. You can make your profile private, so other people can’t read your tweets, and you can vent as much as you like. If it helps you calm down and control your anger, then this is just the thing that you need.

18. Word of Mouth Advertising

There is not a better example of word of mouth advertising on the web then twitter. If people like your brand, or your product they will talk about it. I know I talk about alot of things I see on twitter in real life also. So that is another cool thing the brand is getting out there. Twitter provides result that you want for your business. Just follow the people in your niche and you will see the power of twitter.

19. It will help you learn more about yourself

Twitter is a chance for you to get to know other people. Scholars study culture and people, so by studying their culture, we get to know more about our own culture and ourselves. Twitter does the same thing. You get to know more about yourself because after tweeting for a while, you begin to see yourself through the eyes of your followers. This is a great change that I experienced since using twitter. It makes you more thoughtful about your life.

20. Parents can stay updated with Colleges

More and more colleges and professors are joining twitter, and they let their students follow them, and have creative discussions. This is a great way for the parent to learn about what their kid is doing. I know there are some parents who want to know everything their child is doing, or how is their performance in school. Well this is the way you can do it. Simply Join Twitter.

21. You can see what people think about you or your business

You can see what people really think about you. Twitter is where people are. They are freely expressing their opinion. You can use the search feature on twitter to see what people are talking about each topic. You can write your own name and see what people are talking about you. Whether they are talking good stuff, or bad stuff. It is better than those customer evaluation sheets that Macys and JCPenny ask you to do because not everyone does it. So you never get the neutral view out of it. You either read reviews that are super good or super bad. This shows you the general view about yourself, or a product that you are looking for.

“for businesses – to keep track of the reputation, so they can know when someone is saying something about them” ~ @EmperorAnton

22. Twitter Can Save You Money

Just think about it. If you can send text messages to your friends for free through twitter. Why would you want to have both text messages and internet on your phone. Cancel the text messages and just use twitter. It saves you money. Not just doing this. Twitter have exclusive discounts that you would never know about. There are coupons for products rolling out that we don’t see normally. Like the other day, I wouldn’t have registered my 99 Cents .com domain at godaddy if it wasn’t for twitter. I saw one of my friends tweeted it to me, and I went ahead and registered a domain. Saved myself $8 there. There are also twitter accounts that are specifically for good buys and good deals on the web and in stores. You can follow these accounts and enjoy the benefit of twitter and save yourself some money in the recession.

23. It is good for hosting a party

Yes YES It is. If you are hosting a party and you want to meet more people in your area. Simply tweet it and add tags for the location. This way you can make your party more popular and have fun. This is more for college students than anybody else.

24. You can join for the same reason you joined Facebook or Myspace

If you need this many reasons to join twitter, I want to know why you joined facebook or myspace because twitter can do all that and better. So use the same reasons you used to join facebook or myspace and join twitter.

“for not considered as dull, my friends join without knowing what is it all about. Maybe like another Facebook/MySpace stuff.” ~ @sayzlim

25. To follow me, and Be my friend

If none of the above reasons have convinced you to join twitter, then you should join twitter to follow me and be my friend. You know how cool I am. You definitely want to see what is going on in my life. O wait a minute, were you about to say that you don’t know how cool I am? Well that is because you are not following me on twitter. When you do follow me on twitter, you get to know more about me and you will see how cool I am. Secondly, I take alot of Sweet Monday Link Roundup suggestions from there, so if you want a free backlink from Balkhis join twitter and follow me @syedbalkhi and send me messages.

This was surely a long post, but I was keep finding more and more reasons to write about. Well I hope by now I have convinced you to join twitter. I hope you join twitter and follow me at @syedbalkhi and let me know how I am doing on Balkhis because I can always use some appreciations or some nudges if I mess up. I would love to know everyone who is reading thsi site, so I hope to see you on twitter.

Also I would like to thank all my friends on twitter who helped me made this post possible by contributing their thoughts about this topic. I would suggest each and everyone of you guys to follow all the cool people that send me their view.

Last but not the least, Feel free to post your twitter profiles if you are already on twitter, or you are joining twitter after reading this post, so everyone here can follow you