Use Twitter productively

For someone who is unfiltered in terms of things I talk about online (yes, I'm a gaseous person) (no, I'm not a fan of Kristen and Rob) (unfortunately, I curse), I think I'm a productive user of Twitter. I don't shove my by-the-minute actions and reactions to my followers' throats (although do forgive if I sometimes use it as a chatroom conversing with my friends). I recently changed my bio from "I was penalized for blogging. I am the unknown character of The Four." pertaining to that remarkable incident during high school when I got suspended for one blog post I wrote.

When I first joined Twitter, I was thrilled with the notion of 'tweeting' in not more than 140 characters. Having just deleted my blog, it quickly became a cheap alternative for my blogging habits. Although my sentences got shorter, it was a pretty good exercise that challenged my creativity.


Back then, I scoured twitterverse for all Hollywood and local celebrities I fancied. I followed them and tweeted them in the hopes that out of their thousand followers, they can at least reply back to me (well there was one reply from @DiannaAgron--I think I died for a minute then!).


I lost interest for a while in that site, and focused my time instead on other equally unproductive social networking sites like Facebook. Then I also forgot what made me come back to Twitter, but after that reunion I have always been faithful to keeping myself updated with myself (ha-ha).


I created lists of the people I followed. First there was News. I thought of making one for celebrities too but then that would be boring to go back to. Then I created one for entrepreneurial sources. I had to use a Twitter app to look for other users with similar interests. I also read those "5 people you should follow on Twitter" types of articles and I usually follow them all. Oh, I also created a list for the bands and musicians that I follow. Although right now I only check on my entrep list which became essentially my article reading lists for the day. It's so awesome that I actually start to hate it when I get to the tweet that was the newest one the day before. I just couldn't get enough (I also have Google alerts weekly of those articles with "student entrepreneurs")!


Even on school nights, I prioritize my "ideation" hour/s more than reading a chapter for the next day's lesson. It sucks to a certain extent but I'm comfortable with it. I feel like I'm still productive, even if what I do is just write these topics and ideas down in a notebook--something to look back to when I have more time to brainstorm. What's lacking though is having others to bounce those ideas off. Ironic that only a few (mm, I'm still not sure about that though) members of my entrepreneurial organization are as interested in these same topics as me. (NTS: Engage more people!)


Then I started retweeting all these tweets that I found relevant to what I believed in, or something as basic that says "I just found it interesting and I want to share it to you" type of message. Soon these Twitter accounts followed me and I'm like, "Great!" Being productive in Twitter means your tweets should also be worthy of retweeting, your tweet links are favorited, and the questions you ask are replied to.


Gaining more followers every week boost my confidence. It tells me that I can influence enough people to actually support or care for my cause. When people are willing to listen to what you say, then most likely they love what you're saying. That in itself is good personal marketing. So the next time you tweet something about your dog, do it with a magazine article link. Tweeting about how your day went? Include some insights and ideas you have gathered during the day. Don't worry if it doesn't fit the 140-character rule. Look at it as a training for you to be able to 'pitch' your story in less than 30 words.