Twitter has always been my favorite Social Media network. You can interact with beat reports of your favorite sports team during the game, meet people from across the country in the industry you work in, network with people, share your expertise, interact with people while watching your favorite TV show or at a conference, and see what people are saying about a variety of topics. I love watching a game or a national event through my Twitter feed. It provides me with great insight into what is happening during the game or event, plus, it can be absolutely hilarious sometimes.
Which is why I thoroughly enjoyed Twitter during the presidential debates and feel that Twitter is still relevant. According to Twitter, the first presidential debate was the most tweeted about presidential debate ever, as there was fact-checking tweets, hilarious memes, a fantastic commentary from tweeters around the country. In recent weeks there has been a lot of speculation of a Twitter takeover, the engagement boost that the platform received should emphasis its’ strength.
But what makes Twitter so relevant during the debates and other live events?
Here is why I feel that Twitter is still relevant
Connected Audience
During the debates, there was a live connected audience that made the platform awesome. There was over 10 million tweets during the first debate, as people were RT’ing each other, sharing blog articles, liking tweets and interacting with one another. There was a connected audience talking about 1 main topic, with a lot of great conversations happening and my feed was moving fast, which I absolutely loved.
Intelligent Conversations
Twitter is a great platform to connect with people all over the world. During the debates, not only was there the typical negative comments about the candidates, but I found that there was some intelligent tweets that made you think. I found great conversations happening all night, as tweeters were having some good debates and interactions.
Networking
My first ever tourism conference was an emarketing summit that Dave Serino put on in Detroit, in the summer of 2007. I was introduced to Dave at the conference but it wasn’t until further down the road that we connected on Twitter, along with Anne Swoboda and Tori Goodheart. Now Anne and Tori both worked in Illinois tourism, but Dave at the time was running his own business, Gammet Interactive, we got to know each other through Twitter and realized that we had mutual interests. When we attended the Illinois Governor’s Conference on Tourism, and it was like we were long lost cousins. What I am trying to say is, because of Twitter I was able to not only make great connections, but was able to make friendships that will last a lifetime. I have met a lot of people on Twitter, and that is just another reason that I love Twitter, you can meet and engage with so many people from all over the world. It is a great tool to learn from people and gain further knowledge in your own industry or another one.
Trending Topics
Whether you are logging on to Twitter on a random Wednesday night or during a major event, you can check out the trending topics and join those conversations. During the first debate, three trending topics combined to have nearly 200,000 tweets. These trending topics provided not only a glimpse of what was happening on Twitter, but also if you weren’t watching the debate on television, you knew what was happening by logging on to Twitter.
Communities
For me, it’s the best place to get up to the minute news in a digestible format. It’s all about creating community and there is no better place to do this then on Twitter. You can create your own list of like-minded people, use #hashtags to aggregate topics and form associations with other people based on interest. During the debate, my community was tweeting and having smart conversations and interacting with one another. It was great to actually see conversations happening on a topic that can divide a nation. By building the right community, you have yourself a personal brand of influencers who you can bounce ideas off of, ask questions of, learn from, and who become friends. To me, this is what Twitter is all about.
Twitter may have changed since its’ early years, and no one knows what’s going to happen in the future, but one thing is for sure, you can still have meaningful conversations and engage with people from all over the world. Are you compelled to ramp up your Twitter game? What are your thoughts on Twitter.
