One thing you will notice about Heart and Mind blog is that I am not on any social media, not even almighty twitter account. Everyone is tweeting and boosting the followers they have. I have been told it is one of the necessary evil process for being a successful blogger. Even my favorite minimalist blogger like Leo Baubuta of Zen Habit who has got rid of emails, Google, and other social media, is available only on twitter. Now, I have never chance to talk to my idol as he does not do email and I am not on twitter. I am big believer, if it meant to be, it will happen! I am sort of laid back (lazy) like that.
I am sure, it is almost a crime and suicide in terms of avoiding twitter and write a foolish post about it like this; but I am for being all transparent here so here it is;
If you have not heard of twitter or not on it, there has to a few reasons;
1. You are living under a rock
2. You actually have a life outside of internet
My reason is because, I actually live under the rock! I bet you did not know that!
While there are many sites, posts and blogs about how to use twitter to your advantages, and benefits of using twitter for you blog and your business, I will share an alternate views on it. And no, I am not twitter, bigamist. I have blog friends and other people I admire who are on twitter and I follow them (without twitter account), as I check out what they and others are saying and musing about in 140 word or less.
Without further ado, here are my top ten reason for not being on twitter:
- Everyone has it and uses it: Now, if everyone does it, and if you do it too, it will not make you unique. Or it will make you unique just like everyone else. In my mom’s favorite term “If your all friends jumped off the cliff, would you do it too?”. No, you would not. I choose to follow some of friend’s idea such as being more positive in life but choosing twitter just because they are on it? It is not for me.
- I want to say more than 140 characters: One of the reason I started blogging (out of many) is that I have a gift of gab and love to talk and share. 140 characters or less words is just not enough for me to convey my point. I want to share and say lot of words, say like 142. I can not do it with twitter. But sure, I can do it on my blog and and chat way with real life friends, who have no choice to shut me off at 140 words. I do not want to limit myself!
- It is big time waster: How do I know? Just for fun, I check out other friends and blogger tweets and sure, I can spend minutes and hours reading same information over and over in different tweets. Yes, I follow my blog friends on twitter, without the account! So person like me, who is not twitter who can waste time like that, imagine for people who actually tweet and follow each others tweets, blogs and what not.
- There are Spammers: There are good people and good information on twitter and blogs but many of them spammers and what is worse, there are spammer followers who are also spammers. It is hard to know who are genuine friends and who are not.
- Most people do not care what you ate for breakfast: I see many tweets about such a meaningless tweets which has no meaning to anyone else but the tweeterer himself or herself. Many of us readers are selfish and only care of themselves, not many want to know what you ate for breakfast or how you are seeing clouds instead of working. Wait, I will take last one back, may be your boss cares about that one!
- Lot of noise: Okay, twitter has no actual voice but you know what I am saying, with everyone tweeting around 10-100 tweets a day, it can be noisy and one has to filter through that noise to find what is relevant or even useful information.
- No one is listening: Tweeting to me is like one way conversation, where people tell world what to read, what they are doing and re-tweeting and hardly any one is listening. Imagine going to a party, you are yelling out loud, “I am drinking coffee”, ” I am eating pizza with olives” and some one else is yelling ” I visited my friend and had drinks” and third person is saying, “Pizza with feta cheese is best”; Can you imagine? where no one responding or listening, twitter is party where everyone is talking and hardly anyone is listening unless you count RT tweets.
- Fake ego booster: It can make you feel extremely powerful to say, “I got 200 followers in 3 days.” or ” I have 3498 more followers than you, so you should listen to me.” I actually see many blogs with twitter followers counts proudly displayed, but can you really be friends with 3498 people? Really, you believe that? Good for you if you do. However I think the opposite.
- False insecurity: I know some people feel if they do not keep up with tweeting, they will lose their credibility or authority in internet. If people un-follows them, some can take it so personally. I know someone who checks her twitter account when she is on vacation as she does not want to lose any followers. That can not be good vacation. People follow and un-follow has nothing to do with you, it is all about THEM.
- Paid advertisement: Many people have misconception of this rule but there are paid tweets, as large as $5000 for one tweet like John Chow gets for his sponsored tweets, depending on your authority and gazillion numbers of followers to influence them. trusting every tweet can be dangerous.
Here is a bonus reason to consider:
Down time: What do people do when twitter is down? And believe me, I have heard that there are some technical issues and downtime with twitter and some options keeps changing.
I have friends, I rather meet them,write to them, email them, phone them instead of tweeting them (is there such a word? Oh well, I just invented it).
Personal and Real Reason One of the main personal reason I am not on twitter or any social media is that I barely get a time to blog, read other blogs and comment with 2 little kids, homeschooling, and teaching at co-op school with other life’s tasks that we all must do. I do not want to be “too networked”. While my blog is small and growing slowly, one of my favorite blog Small Notebook by Rachel is very successful with 12,000 plus subscriber and that too without any social medias help, this gives me a hope that I might make it. There is another one of my blogging friend Raul from Alien Ghost and Carla Half Dozen Daily who are not on twitter, I am sure there are a few others who are in similar position.
I have made this choice mostly on time constraint and I know twitter can be very useful tool, if used right. Who knows what future holds, I may adapt if necessary but right now I am happy with my slow growth and slow blogging.
Update (Dec 17, 2012) after 3.5 years of blogging, heart and mind is finally on twitter (slow twitterer too) Zengirl9
see: Heart and mind is finally on twitter
Preeti AKA Zengirl
Image sources:
The evolution of communication: grove-marketing.com
The history of my blog cartoon: citizensound.net
nice one!
Hi Preeti,
I respect your reasons for not using Twitter and how it is better to be unique and I totally agree.
I am on Twitter, but I don’t spend much time on Twitter. Sounds funny doesn’t it? Like now, I am reading your post from Feed Demon and I’m not even on any internet browser. I even have the choice to share your post on Twitter or any other media that you have offered on your blog post, but then again, I am not logged onto any media at this time, while I am reading and commenting on you blog. That’s the beauty of Feed Demon and I don’t have to leave and get on those sites in order to share your article.
I use Twitter in a different way, Facebook too. I simply share good articles by people that I follow closely (which are few on Twitter) and whatever other articles I think will be helpful to others. And that’s pretty much how I use Twitter/Facebook. I don’t waste time sharing what I’ve eaten unless I share the recipe for what I have had.
Twitter can be a time waster, but if we learn to manage it and keep it to a minium, then it can actually be a great way to network with others. At least it has helped me in the world of networking.
Thanks for sharing why you don’t use Twitter. I’m learning more about you and I love getting to know my blogging buddies better. 🙂
Take care,
Evelyn
I don’t “Twitter”, “Facebook”, or anything else like that… Nor do I “follow” that stuff… I have a busy & full life, and really don’t care who wants to be my friend, or who had oatmeal for breakfast. lol!! My 2 blogs keep me busy enough and even those I take frequent breaks from to preserve my sanity. 😉 Speaking of tweeting, a beautiful cardinal is sitting in my tree out front… I’m off to enjoy this beautiful day!!
Oh, this is a great list! My blog is linked to Twitter in that when I post it automatically tweets it, but I haven’t ever written a tweet. Or twittered? I’m not even sure of the terminology! I don’t Facebook either. I used to but deleted my account. I found that my biggest problem with FB and Twitter is your number 5 -I don’t really care! And I think there are more awesome ways of having meaningful communication without wasting time. I’m not saying I would never get involved, but I can’t see it working for me or spending much effort on it.
Ha ha ha interesting post to read Preeti…
I have and use Twitter, I have Facebook, but I rarely use it. I like to use StumbleUpon and Delicious, because there I find great articles and sites for reading… 🙂 I do not think I’m addicted to these websites, I just use them. 🙂
hello preeti,
how are you?
just when i’m thinking i need to improve my facebook/twitter habits, you write this lol!!.
right now my twitter/facebook account is used for sharing articles i find interesting and i shall share this.
hows the homeschooling going?
take care and enjoy the rest of the day
Hi Preeti,
I am on Twitter. I’m not obsessed and it certainly isn’t everyday. I would say in the future depending on the goal of your blog you may reconsider. We all do things in our own time when things are right for us personally.It’s all good. I did enjoy reading this and the cartoons are priceless!
Well said, Preeti. Twitter is still baffling to me at times for precisely those reasons. Your heart and mind are in the right place. There are so many tips and tricks out there that it is far too easy to loose sight of the big picture. I believe that when our priority is producing great, authentic and genuine content all the rest will fall into place.
Hey Preeti,
You have a lot of solid reasons for not using Twitter listed here. Those are all reasons many people will probably not use the network. I’m on it and do enjoy it to a point though I find Facebook much more social and friendly and personal myself.
It’s just one more network to be on out of hundreds of them out there but my thing is simple: Whichever network works best for each individual is what they should use.
Twitter doesn’t work for you and it wouldn’t be a good idea to use it and it’s you you brought this up because it shows that everyone is different and all have their own reason to implement certain advantages of using or not using social media.
Thanks for the post! 🙂
Preeti,
I totally understand your reasons for not being on Twitter. Your party analogy had me cracking up! I personally like Twitter because it works well for me. I don’t tweet about every little thing I’m doing. I only tweet when I have a helpful tip or cool thing I want to share with others that’s too short for a blog post. It also helps me remember to check out other people’s blogs when I see them tweeting, and I hope it helps remind others to check out my blog! I get a lot of useful coupon codes, Swagbucks codes, etc. from Twitter too.
Ditto on the time wasting. Twitter is horrible for productivity and business uses. If you want to promote your brand, focus on writing great content on your blog, or producing a great product. If you want to market, focus on search engines or search marketing. And for personal uses, it’s even more horrible. Noone listens to you (unless you’re a guru and posts an inspirational blurb everyday like Steve Pavlina or zenhabits). You are definitely right.. it’s a one way conversation, and a false sense of ego.. u think everyone cares what you have to say, but nope, noone cares.. it’s kinda funny =)
I’m with Rob on this. There is a certain genius behind twitter which not everyone will understand but what does happen is occasionally a brilliant idea will arise and twitter will be the vehicle for that idea to spread quickly, far and wide. There are other means too but twitter is just another vehicle in a world of many.
If you choose not to use it…more power to you and you’ve been preeti successful with your blog so far so there isn’t a need. I use twitter to help promote others, not so much myself but I occasionally use it for my radio show to, so listeners have an easy way of communicating with me.
😀
Karishma,
Thanks.
Evelyn,
Thank you for your detailed response. I am not trying to be unique only, I have very little time to do blogging (part time), I just do not want to add more “to-do” for it.
Feed demon sounds like such a neat device, I should check it out, how do I get it on? Signing in?
I know you share great posts from various blog on twitter, that is so sweet! I think you are right, twitter can be useful and helpful tool if you use it right!
I am glad we are getting to learn more about each other and I am learning a lot from you. Take care.
Carla,
I know you got your hands full with 2 blogs, kids, no-spend month, recent move and all. I am not on any social media for very same reasons, lack of time and I really do not understand whole social media so much, I guess I am bit old fashioned gal.
I hope you enjoyed your beautiful day watching and hearing real tweets from real bird! 🙂
Simple Poppy,
That is pretty clever of you to have automated twitter working for you. I know there are several free plugins they are wonderful that way, I had thought of using once as many of blog friend use twitter but in the end I did not do much.
I am like you, as I think twitter works best if you spend quality times, sharing quality links and tidbits and it can take up extra time which I do not have right now.
How it auto tweets working out for you?
Marko,
I have seen this trend, people are using twitter and facebook sparingly lately. I think StubleUpon, Delicious and Digg can bring lot of traffic as well share some cool posts. But getting an account of each one and password and all, I got overwhelmed.
You seem like a guy who is balanced so you will waste time on these sites like Zengirl who is known to spend hours on a internet reading and reading. 🙂 So she must stay away.
Ayo,
I am fine and how are you doing?
🙂 Sorry to make you read this post when you were trying to improve your social media presence. You always share great posts and thank you for sharing mine a few times.
Homeschooling KG and teaching co-op is on full swing, It keeps me quite busy with these plus 1.5 year old who is busy climbing and running everywhere. That is why my posting and visiting blogs have slowed down bit more.
Life is all about balance right? But I am busy in each area of life, so I guess that is in a way balanced 🙂 ha
Thank you Sandra, Ayo and Evelyn! I can not RT tweet you so here it is from me!
Tess,
You seem like a lady who knows her stuff and does not go crazy spending hours on twitter. I have spend hours without twitter, following my blog friends.
I am not saying twitter is not an option but with 2 little kids, homeschooling, teaching, cooking, cleaning, gardening and part time blogging, I barely get time to do extra thing for now.
I love the cartoons too, I had fun finding and searching for it! 🙂 I am glad you liked them.
Rob,
I know my heart is in right place, it is telling me what I am doing is right but my mind is telling me for me to be successful blogger I should be on twitter and following trends. Right now, my heart has won!
There are so many ways to promote your blog and twitter, social media can be helpful. I am hoping if my content is good enough it will built, if not, that is okay too! I enjoy my small group of blog friends here.
Eric,
I know Zenguy who is on personal Facebook and he enjoys it, he has got hold of his old classmate and catching up. You can built friendship, relationship on social media, but it does require you spending quality time.
There are now auto tweet, auto blogs so bloggers do not have to work hard, but then again, I like working and writing manually and creating my original posts.
My main point is lack of time right now, whatever I do, I want to spend quality time or I do not do it all, let’s see if I get more time in future, I can have 10 blogs and 10 twitter accounts! Now that will be something huh? 🙂
I too do not use twitter or facebook, at the same time I respect such innovative ideas and social internet inventions, and neither have I tried to see how they might benefit me. For me, my blog is the twitter and the facebook and the ‘all the other social connecting mediums’ out there.
Betsy,
I know we have talked about, twitter can be very useful tool to bring traffic, sharing a post, getting deals, getting tweets from celebrity and so on.
My main point is lack of time with kids and homeschooling, I wish I can do all but simply there is not much of time left when you have little kids.
Yeah it takes time anywhere to build a lasting relationships and that takes effort too.
I personally enjoy writing blogs articles and finding new bloggers to connect with through their blogs and mine and social media.
I actually only use Hootsuite for auto tweets and such for when I’m asleep and throughout the day when different people may be on to see articles I’ve published. However, I am still on throughout the day myself and interact greatly.
Thanks for the reply. 🙂
Henway,
Twitter has been beneficial to many bloggers, it works the best, if you are known authority in your subject! It could be time consuming sometimes but like many commenter say they use twitter a little, which could be a great win-win situation for them.
Most of the twitter is one way conversation, twitter is funny in some way and genius for others in someways.
Amit,
I agree, twitter has it is genius ways, and I do not claim to know tool well. You can spread the idea, message very fast to the world, if you are authority. However for most bloggers which may or may not be the case.
I choose not to use it, it is because of lack of time with kids, and teaching and other household tasks. I barely blog part time too. I would not say my self successful blogger but I am growing slowly that is something I am happily proud and surprised about.
I know many of my real life friends, and blog friends are on twitter and I have checked them out, including you! 🙂 Good job.
Sufism,
I am glad to know, I am not the only one who is out of social media circus (that is what feels like sometimes). I am sure it has worked out for others, but I have not seen the potential for it to spend time on it, which I have limited of.
I have mixed emotions about twitter. I am on it and I actually have built up a fairly large follower base. Of course few of those are really valuable.
It is and can be a tool.
I know some people really use it as a form of mass communication, but personally I prefer to talk to people through email if I “really” have something to talk about or through the blog if I want to “preach”
The main reason twitter works is because it works. IT is circular logic, but true, there are many people who use it simply because so many people use it.
I try to actually stay away from getting too deeply involved with it also, because you are right, there is something hypnotic about checking out everything people are saying. IT could be easy to get sucked in and waste a ton of time.
Hi Preeti. I love Twitter because I use it for just a few moments and get a lot of traffic from it. It could easily take up a lot of time though if a person starts following streams or having lots of conversations. I applaud you for doing what feels right for you. That’s why your blog will continue to grow–with or without Twitter–you’re an original!
Eric,
I see you are active on twitter, btw thanks for mentioning this post!
Yes, in blog world it takes time to build relationship. I try my best to reply here and also visit commentator’s blogs regardless of how big or small they are. If we treat, all blogger way we wanted to be treated, it would so cool.
I do not know Hootsuite, sounds like a good tool you are using.
Steve,
I agree twitter works for most people, and it could work for me but right now lack of time is one of the biggest reason I do not want to be networked. As I mentioned this is crazy and suicidal in terms of growing my blog but I am odd in that way.
My blog has never been about business or making money, it is about my heart and mind, maybe some day money will come, if not I plan to write for myself.
I do check out other people’s tweets, it is kind of neat! Silly huh?
Jean,
I think most of world will agree with you twitter works and it brings loads of traffic. You are wise and normal, I am the odd ball here.
Yes,I am original all right, original fool! 🙂 Heart and Mind is basically there to help improve my self and improve my writing skills, which I have long way to go so I suppose I can get away without being on twitter for now. Maybe someday when I have more time, I will join you and other twitter friends.
Hi Preeti,
I sometimes think that twitter doesn’t really help like other social medias such as facebook for example. Also, many people don’t even read what others tweet, I know this for a fact for many people. Yet, I do it because I figured it won’t hurt. Thanks for sharing
even though i have a twitter account i strongly agree with you
i believe twitter won’t survive for long ,facebook will
Dia,
Really? I did not know as I am not on it, I thought it was great traffic builder. I did not know facebook was better, lot of my friends are on it.
You are wise to use all media available, which can be great for your blog! If it can not hurt, and you have time, using is best choice.
Farouk,
Wow, after Dia, you are the second person to say this, I did not know. I thought twitter was top pick for many bloggers, I am learning new stuff. Thanks.
Very interesting post.
I have read quite a bit lately about online business, and I see all over the cyberspace “SOCIAL MEDIA IS A MUST”. I see that people follow people on Twitter to get followers. Weather they really follow faithfully is a big question! Well maybe only a very few.
I started on twitter to stay in touch with friends only. Then realized Facebook to be better. Now, I believe that if someone is a ‘friend’, he or she will not mind going through the extra effort of sending an email.
I see myself reading my own comment, and I feel like I should write a real ‘letter’, with my own hand for true friends. Well, the stamps are now more expensive than email, so email wins, at least until I can find the ‘true’ cost of email!
Great post. You should be able to say more than 140 characters. But some of the most profound things have been said in less than 140 characters.
1. The truth is a pathless land
2. We become what we think
3. Live everyday like it is your last.
4. Life with out a purpose is not life. But torture.
I’m active on Twitter but you have gave me something to think about. By the way, I’m glad things a pretty good going on here. 🙂
Hi! I can understand you points about social media. Social media can be very time consuming! I’m pretty sure that your blog can grow by leaps and bounds without using social media. Your content is good enough to support itself. 🙂
As for myself, I do use Twitter and Facebook. I have to admit that I love them both in different ways. I have met many wonderful people in both mediums.
All paths can be equally good as long as it works for you. 🙂 Loving blessings!
Your analogy is #7 is so humorous. I think that if people only tweeted the significant or thoughtful stuff, I would use it, but the way it is now I don’t really have time to sift through everyone’s opinions on pizza.
Hi Preeti, I have over 25,000 followers but I hardly pay attention to it anymore. It’s too much. Most of them don’t care what I say and I use it almost exclusively to post quotes I like.
The biggest frustration I have with twitter is the 140 character limit. That’s often not enough to say something important or profound. Twitter is a symptom of our short-burst over-stimulated and shallow culture. A nice idea, but it doesn’t work well for me.
Kamal,
Thank you for your honest and thoughtful thoughts here. Yes, true friends will make an extra effort to send an email, call or write. Social media has its place, like you said, you also found Facebook to be better right?
My point is not that social media is bad, my point is always that you need to spend quality time to be a good friend and make one, same goes for social media too, quality of time will bring better friends, which can be time consuming for mommy bloggers like me. If I had time and full time nanny, I might do social media.
Jonathan,
You are right, some time less said is better and these are profound sentences.
Twitter is more than being profound to me, if I going to be on it, I want to spend quality time, which I simply do not have currently with 2 little munchkins who take up my lot of time and I gladly give.
Walter,
Good to see you here! If twitter working for you, keep doing it. For me, time spent on it is not realistic right now.
Thank you, I am enjoying my slow blogging with small group of good blog friends.
Andrea,
Aww…you are too sweet! Thank you for kind words.
Yes, I know many of my real and blog friends use twitter, facebook, linked in and other forms of social media. Social media is great for promoting your blog, making and meeting new friends but blogging itself is time consuming, I do not want to add more to my list of things to do.
My path will not work for many, even I am not sure it will work for me but I have little choice left. I pick my kids over twitter any time.
Rachel,
You are one of the biggest success I have seen without help of social media with your 12K subscriber and raving fans all around.
Thank you for liking humor in my post. Actually, you comment made me chuckle! I am sure twitter user talks more than pizza too!
Stephen,
Welcome! I checked out your twitters and I sure do like the quotes!
You seemed to be doing rather well with 25K follower. For many blog business is getting links out, not many has time to read your whole post either, many just browse through it to comment! All of us tend to be in hurry, I like to take it slow and make difference, if not in anyone’s life, my own for sure.
Thanks for stopping by and comment.