Now that I truly feel like Twitter and I can change our Facebook status to “In a Relationship,”  I can come clean.

I, @cindykane, once thought Twitter would be a waste of time.

There, I said it.  I struggled, resisted, complained, and even frowned once or twice at the thought of introducing yet one more social media tool into my life.  I was a frequent Facebooker and liked it that way and could not imagine why in the world the universe needed to hear from me through Facebook, through this blog site and now through Twitter.   I thought to myself, “who the heck would read my tweets and who the heck has time to spend on this anyway?”  Well, a quick purge of Facebook applications found some time available and I can still hold my head up high even without a Farm in Farmville. Regarding why the heck anyone would read my tweets, I’ll keep that one rhetorical for fear of inspiring “unfollowership.”

I had a few choices to make regarding my lack of love for Twitter.  I could have just ignored it, but for some reason it just wouldn’t go away.  I could have just decided to stay in my safe little Facebook friend circle and happily tended to my farm.  However, that wasn’t doing much for me in the name of stepping outside of “my circle” and I’m really not a fan of sitting by the sidelines and not getting involved. (ok, I’m Director of Student Involvement on campus…this works).  So, there was no choice.  I jumped in and figured it out.

Right when I got started:

• I took recommendations from friends about people to follow who “use it well.”  I didn’t define what that meant because I didn’t really know.  I just let my friends show me who was sharing good things.
• I didn’t follow celebrities.  Granted, I follow them now… but at first I stayed away.  Yes, Ashton Kucher (I’m sure he is an avid follower of this blog!) I am the one follower you didn’t have.
• I didn’t tweet much.  I still was trying to figure out what to put out there.  Using the cocktail party analogy, I just sat in the corner for a while and did some “people watching.”

While I started my “figure out Twitter” project, I also read Tara Hunt’s book The Whuffie Factor.  These two forces aligned for me in a way that I finally understood social media and why I needed to figure this out. I also realized that this wasn’t just about me and my personal networking/connections with friends, it was about what ways I could take the opportunities social media presents to the world and translate it to campus and ways to reach out to students.  (If you want to read more, I did a series of posts on this book starting with this post called What’s a Whuffie?)

So, after a lightning bolt of “aha” arrived into my Twitter life, I now really can’t imagine not being connected in that way.  I have really found a professional network on there that I never knew existed and found a way to (economically!) challenge myself to meet new people and learn about new topics without having to travel from the comfort of my own computers.  If you are still struggling to find the relevance of the world of Twitter in your life, I’m happy to offer a few stories:

• Twitter is an equalizer.  I have debated some “hot topic” issues with people many years my senior in the field and have also been “schooled” by a few new professionals in the same manner.  These lively discussions wouldn’t happen across a conference table because we’re all too focused on rank and politics.
• Twitter is concise.  As someone known for being a tad verbose, Twitter has taught me how to hone my communication approach when needed.  It’s amazing how much you can say when limited to 140 characters.  The brevity of Twitter is what makes it so powerful.
• Twitter is simple.  While the world of “hashtags” (don’t call it a number sign…trust me!) and “@” and the “DM” was a bit much at first, if you learn these few pieces of Twitter trivia, you are golden.  That’s it.  If you mastered Facebook you will find Twitter to be refreshingly simple.  (and if you’re still confused, read my friend Ed Cabellon’s post called Teaching Twitter to Colleagues.)
• Twitter is a community.  You get as much as you give. The main difference between Facebook and Twitter is that Facebook is a “closed” circle and Twitter is an open one.  Using the cocktail party analogy again, if I just kept sitting in the corner and not saying anything then no one was going to come talk to me either.  So, I jumped in and started talking.  Now you can’t shut me up  This includes talking to your “friends” as well as talking to those who reach out and talk to you.
• Twitter connects people in “real” ways. Some of the participants in the weekly #sachat met up at the NACA, ACUI, NASPA and ACPA conventions this year.  I was a bit apprehensive about what these “tweetups” would be like but I know for darned sure that I wanted to check these folks out in person!  What I learned was that while we were meeting for the first time, we already knew each other.  You got the chance to skip the small talk and just pick right up “where you left off” to the tune of the last 140 characters you may have read from that person.

I confess, I had no idea what to expect when I met up with a group of student affairs people I had been writing in short sentences to since October 2009 in #sachat and beyond.  What I found was a group of outgoing, hilarious, friendly, accepting people that were even more dynamic in person than they seemed online.  In the wise words of Teri Bump, “you tweet who you are.”  These people were the real deal and I easily could have spent my entire ACPA with them and not gotten enough time.

So, what are you waiting for?  If you need some encouragement to climb on board just post a comment and I’m happy to help. As I recently learned, there’s an entire professional network out there just waiting for new participants and you just need to be yourself.  Take it from me.  The only way to figure it out is to just jump in!