Do you work in an office or at home? If you work in an office, is there a water cooler? Actually, where I work there isn’t. Instead we have a kitchen, but it serves the same function as the proverbial “water cooler.” What’s the water cooler function? It’s not just to dispense water but it becomes a gather spot of conversations, for gossip, even for casual brainstorming sessions. Where I work, we have a white board in the kitchen so people can even make notes of their brainstorming sessions.
So, what does this have to do with twitter? Well, in this age of freelancing and work at home jobs, some of us work in somewhat isolated environments where we don’t have a water cooler to gather around. I’m an author and I need to chat with other authors from around the world and exchange ideas and thoughts. And sometimes just keep up to date on each other’s lives. So we need a virtual water cooler. And that water cooler is twitter.
This is something that some supposed twitter experts miss when they give advice on how to use twitter and social media. Everyone wants to advise me about branding and getting followers and promotion and SEO. It all seems to be about going out there and beating people over the head with social media to sell something.
That’s not really how I use twitter. Am I wrong? I don’t know. Twitter is still fairly new and social media seems to reinvent itself every couple of years. But I do know that I don’t just have followers on twitter, I also have friends. Real friends who share advice and stories and who love to chat with each other. For me, this seems to be the best use of twitter. As that virtual water cooler where you never know what topic will come up next.