Is Twitter a Waste of Your Time?

Question: What do you call it when a business convinces you that your identity depends on their service?

Answer: A marketing success.

Twitter has convinced many of us that we need to participate in order to publicly “exist.”

But a quick scan of the Twitterverse suggests that many users are getting far less value than they think. Twitter users donate massive amounts of time to the platform, but the handful of likes, replies, and retweets that most people receive reflect a paltry return on intellectual investment.

For those of us focused on sharing our ideas, the time it takes to write a thoughtful tweet may not be worth the limited audience that actually reads it.

When it comes down to it, most participation on Twitter may be a victory of marketing over common sense.

You might receive 5, 50, or even 500 likes for a good tweet. But a $2 Facebook ad might more reliably get you more. And an old-fashioned online comment on a New York Times article might get your ideas even more attention than that.

So how should you use your time on Twitter more wisely? Here are some simple strategies that I’m testing out:

If my tweets earn an average of a handful of interactions, they only deserve a few minutes of my time. Yes, I know that tweets often get many more “impressions” than retweets and likes, but I’m skeptical of the value of this metric.

2. Use other platforms first — and use Twitter last.

Write content for other platforms first, and post excerpts from that content on Twitter. If people reply or engage on Twitter, fantastic. If they don’t, who cares?

The bottom line is that there are many other ways to share an idea that can engage more people than the handful who happen to read what you tweet at the moment that you tweet it. And while you certainly should share links to your other content via Twitter, Twitter is unlikely to be the best place to create content from scratch.

Traditional media outlets make it easy for you to post online comments and have them read by hundreds or even thousands of other people. You can then repost those comments to LinkedIn, Facebook, or a blog — and then share a link on Twitter.

3. Finally, ask yourself if there is a better use of your writing time.

For example, blog platforms like Medium offer content longevity. Your writing becomes a part of your portfolio in a way that old tweets never can.

Or consider going even bigger: self-publishing an e-book. If you are spending time every day on social media platforms, you might as well turn some or all of that time into a permanent byline that says “author.”

Indeed, even just 30 minutes of Twitter time a day adds up to one month of full-time work over the course of a year. (30 minutes a day x 365 days a year =182.5 hours = 4.5 full-time work weeks at 40 hours a week.)

What could you write or publish with a solid month of full-time work to back it up?

Of course, there are plenty of exceptions to what I’ve written above.

If you are one of the following, your use of Twitter might be both wise and beneficial:

And a final, final thought:

For most people, Twitter is a graveyard of ideas marked by 280-character tombstones. The only time someone ever stops to leave flowers is when you’ve written something you shouldn’t have.

Who reads President Obama’s old tweets? No one.

Who reads President Trump’s old tweets? Everyone.

When it comes to using Twitter, allocate your time wisely.

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