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My First Time Using Twitter

For the better part of the past four months, I have been on Twitter. This was my first extensive experience on the social networking app. Prior to this year, I tweeted a few things out for my university's student-led TV news station, but I had never used Twitter personally before. 

I thought Twitter was a place where people shared their witty thoughts, YouTube stars used it to connect with their audiences, and people got mad whenever Donald Trump tweeted. I have realized that Twitter is a place for all these things and more. Twitter is great to get tidbits of world news, keep up with industry trends and see great content from companies engaging with their audiences. Overall, I would say my experience on Twitter was great. The only time I felt unsure about using Twitter was after watching The Facebook Dilemma and learning that Facebook keeps all of your data including their best prediction of your location. I got nervous about sharing content that traced me to being at my university. I got over this in a couple days, although I still think twice about the personal information I post.

I mostly accessed Twitter from my phone, but sometimes I would use my laptop. I accidentally linked my Twitter to my Hootsuite account for work, so I could have scheduled posts and monitored engagement with my posts through that, but I didn’t. I would definitely recommend Hootsuite though if you manage multiple social media accounts (#notsponsored).

Three experiences stood out to me during my time on Twitter. The first was when two of my favorite companies, Pinterest and Dunkin, interacted with me. Pinterest asked its followers to share some encouraging words of what makes each day a little better. I commented, “Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day. Be the good.” Pinterest sent me a direct message asking my permission to potentially share my post on their external marketing channels. I was super excited and gave them my permission, but I don’t know if anything came from it.


I also tweeted a picture of myself getting a pumpkin Dunkin coffee in the warm weather and they responded, “The weather can’t stop #DunkinPumpkin season.” It meant a lot that they read my tweet and responded to what I said.



The second instance was when Dave Kerpen liked/commented on all my tweets about his book. He truly practices what he preaches, and it was great to interact with him. The final instance that stood out to me on Twitter was when my blog post that I shared on Twitter was picked up by Regenesys Business School and shared on their Regenesys News Daily.

In the future, I see myself using Twitter professionally for the companies I work for. I’ve learned how to create engaging pieces of micro-content to build up relationships instead of pushing the hard sell. As for my personal use, I may keep Twitter around for a few more months. I don’t have any personal social media accounts under my name, and I try to limit the amount of personal information that I put on the internet, but I do enjoy the content I can find on Twitter.

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