To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

Twitter has been referred to as the Marmite of social media. You either love it or you hate it. I must admit that despite being a regular tweeter, I have been having mixed feelings about this channel over the months. Some days I think it is great, when I find out something, or connect to someone that I could not have done through traditional means, whilst on other days I find it a horribly short term, knee jerk and celebrity obsessed waste of time.

However, I am gradually working out how to look at Twitter and hence how to make best use of it. The best, if slightly simplistic, analogy I have found to illustrate this is to think of Twitter being like radio. You can be a general listener and skip from broadcaster to broadcaster listening to a range of different content, or you can tune in on a particular topic or station. As a content provider, you can either identify a specific audience you wish to communicate with, or broadcast your message far and wide and see who picks it up. So if you work out how you wish to engage, Twitter can yield some useful results. For example, I made my first appearance on FT.com through Twitter and I recently linked up with a new potential source of funding for an MPI initiative through a broadcast tweet asking for information.

There is no need, in fact given the volume it is impossible, to consume all or even a large part of the content broadcast on Twitter, but if you get the tuning right it can be a very productive medium. What do you think?