The Power Of Twitter: Coffee Anyone?

The Power of Twitter

I have been using Twitter since October 2008 and it’s proved to be a great way to meet new like minded people and a way to share my articles. Recently I was on a Coffee tour of Café Britt in Costa Rica. I had my iPod touch and realized they had free Wi-Fi, so I logged into Twitter and gave a quick update that I was about to go on a tour.

When I was done with the tour and was browsing the gift shop, one of the tour guides announced “Is Ivan Campuzano here?” I raised my hand and said that it was me, but I was a little worried that somehow they knew my name. I then came to find that one of my followers William from Alaska read my update, went online to the Café Britt website, gave them a call, and purchased some coffee and chocolates as a gift for me.

To me, it was a lovely surprise but also let me know what an incredibly connected world we live in. Even in a little town in Costa Rica with just my iPod I was able to let people know what I was up to, but more importantly that I had developed some type of relationship with someone I did not know personally. I mostly use my Twitter account to send daily motivation to my followers in the form of quotes, random thoughts, and links to my articles which I hope inspire others.

I assume that the reason @wrtheuer bought me this nice gift was because I somehow inspired him either through Twitter or through my blog. The internet is a crazy place and sometimes it’s hard to know if your efforts are even being noticed, but this thoughtful gesture made me believe that there are many people out there who appreciate the work you do. This little experience really made my day, getting free coffee and chocolates was awesome, but to me just the fact that a stranger would take the time and effort to brighten up my day was amazing.

If you are not familiar with Twitter, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS), or external applications.

(video of Cafe Britt and me thanking @wrtheuer for the gift)

In the example I used above, I used Twitter to give a small real-time update to let my followers know what I was up to. Twitter can be used in many ways not just as a way of updating your status.

The Many Ways You Can Use Twitter

Get Feedback: If you ever need a second opinion or a new perspective, just blast out a message asking for advice. If you have thousands of followers this can be a great source of collective intelligence that can give you immediate insight into your question.

Hire People: Everyone is on Twitter, if you ever need any type of freelance service send out a quick message to your friends for any recommendations. It’s a great place to find writers, programmers, website designers, and graphic designers.

Make New Friends: Twitter makes it easy to find people with similar interests, just go online to http://search.twitter.com and type in keywords that relate to the kind of people you would like to meet.

Personal Branding: Twitter can be a way to establish yourself as a leader, expert, or persona within the world you wish to be in. If you are genuine in your interactions you will be able to develop positive relationships that were never once possible.

Read News: Twitter allows anyone in the world to become a news reporter and has been the fastest resource for immediate news as recently shown by the people in Iran.

Use it as a To-do list: You can use an online task management service that is synced with Twitter. One example is Remember The Milk.

Direct traffic: Twitter can be used to get traffic to your websites or the sites of friends. As long as you post useful, entertaining, and valuable links there is the potential for others to help you spread them by re-tweeting.

Set Up Meetings: This can be a great quick and easy way to set up an impromptu meeting. If you just arrived in a new city and would like some company at a coffee shop, send a tweet and meet one of your followers who lives in the area.

Business Management: Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another. Everyone on your team can use it for immediate updates and quick company memos.

Notify Your Customers: You can use it to notify them of any new products or services or a way to promote special offers and incentives.

Take Notes: You can tweet a quick note or save a link for later reference.

Event Updates: Need to update your audience about your upcoming art show or music festival? Send a quick update before and on the day of your event, if you have developed sometime of rapport you can expect some people to come, who otherwise would have not been aware or informed about it.

Find Prospects: If you know who your niche market is, do a quick search for keywords related to your product or service on Twitter Search and then follow users. If you find someone who may need or is interested in your services, send them a direct message. This is a tricky area as marketers increasingly use Twitter to spam.

Water the Plants: Botanicals Kits let plants reach out for human help! They offer a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates to your mobile phone. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know. Botanicals use moisture probes to allow your plant to tweet you a message when it needs a drink.

Well hope you enjoyed my article on the power of Twitter, if you enjoyed it please send me a tweet 🙂 about it so I can start following you. Hope all is well, tweet ya later my friends 🙂

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http://twitter.com/ivancampuzano