Twitter is Not Just About What You’re Doing Now

Twitter is a tool to broadcast messages to people you know and people you don’t know. At the heart of it is the central problem of what to tweet. What should you write and what should you say? What do you want to transmit or share that represents who you are? What do you want people to care or know about?

I think one of the main problems is the question you’re asking. The default question you’ll see on Twitter is ‘What are you doing now’. The question determines the answer, so one way to tweak Twitter into something that works for you is to change the question. Instead of ‘what are you doing?’, ask something else. Maybe the following:

1. ‘What do you think more people should know about now?’
2. ‘What holds your attention?’

Here’s some similar advice on Twitter:

“The best way to make the most use of it is not just answer what are you doing now,” says Owyang. “Instead, answer: ‘What’s important to me?’ That changes the conversation and makes value. It takes away some of the minutia and shows you want to talk about something that’s more useful and interesting.”

Most people who are new to Twitter seem to be stuck on answering only one question.. that of what they are doing at the moment. This barrier (if you may call it that) is part of the common perception that Twitter is a waste of time or that its incredibly banal (why should anyone care what you had for lunch?). Thinking beyond the default and creating your own questions to answer helps one to find greater meaning/value when using Twitter.