Five Reasons Why Quitting Twitter is Wrong

According to a Nielsen report earlier this week, 60% of people who sign up for Twitter leave after the first month.

Frankly, they’re making a big mistake by bailing out before getting a good handle on why Twitter is becoming a valuable tool that should between Google and email within your daily online arsenal.

One of the biggest reasons they’re abandoning Twitter is they haven’t taken the time to understand how to make it work for them, which is a shame.

Here are five reasons why not giving Twitter a real chance is a mistake:

1. It’s becoming a vibrant and powerful communications tool to have conversations with people around the world about everything and anything. You want to talk about politics, swine flu, the economy, television, golf, the auto industry or a fine bottle of wine, you can do it on Twitter.

2. It’s the new inbox/outbox. Originally, your Email client was where you sent and received electronics messages. Today, people want and need to reach you in a variety of digital ways that includes Email, Facebook, SMS and Twitter. If you’re engaged online, and not using all of these tools, you’re missing a key communications element.

3. Twitter is a massive outsourcing tool for getting information and help. If you have a question, there’s someone in the Twittersphere more than happy to help out. I use Twitter on a regular basis to get answers about technical questions or suggestions about online services or software. In some ways, it’s better that way as Google.

4. You can share ideas, content and online resources. The world is getting busier and smaller, and the Internet is getting noisier as social media lets everyone into the conversation. Twitter is a way to build a trusted network that can deliver interesting articles, blog posts and online services that you would have never known about.

5. Twitter is a way to build new connections and relationships. If you spend enough time on Twitter, engage in the conversations, and provide help and insight, you start to connect with people that you would have otherwise not met. For example, I ran into Rob Tyrie at the mesh after-party. I had only known Rob on Twitter, but in some ways we always we knew each other.

For those of you who have left Twitter, my recommendation is you need to give Twitter more a chance. Like dating, first impressions can be deceiving. Maybe the first date didn’t go as well as expected but if you don’t go on a second date, you’ll never discover that the person sitting across the table has an amazing personality.

More thoughts, check out ABC.com’s Ahead of the Curve.

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