Hello, my name is Sean and I am a Twitterholic. Well, almost. I first started using and studying twitter about 2 years ago now. I see a massive opportunity to leverage all these new social technologies to bring me and my business into the forefront of the consulting and training industry. Twitter does so much more than just helping my business and other businesses grow. I am connecting with people and other leaders in various industries that, though traditional media, I would of never had the chance to connect with on such a regular and intimate basis.Sure, there were, and still are, skeptics of twitter and social media. Now, TV land and prime time have latched onto twitter; there is no end in sight. Everyone from Celebrities to CNN to Late Night talk shows have jumped on the bandwagon – and with a vengeance. When Jimmy Fallon starts a # hashtag on twitter it ends up trending – meaning he is able to keep his audience engaged while in the past they would be just watching the television. Not only that, it gives his fans a way to connect with him like never before and keep people talking about him between shows.

Another thing I love about twitter is brevity. Instead of taking a year to write a book then go through all the publishing and marketing hoops, we can all now share our most valuable asset with the world instantly and get immediate feedback. This really helps me to refine my message to best help people and businesses who also want to maximize this amazing technology.

Much to my surprise, I have now met more people in real life at a physical location in my city or in the world because of meeting them on twitter. Many of my best friends, clients and business connections I actually met on twitter first. The reason I utilize twitter for making new connections is I can so easily go back in their tweets and, based on the way they communicate, I can decide whether this is a person I would like to get to know better.

Google is great and they are working hard to integrate social search into the results. Yet with twitter I can find information from people I already have a relationship with and in pretty much real time. Building relationships in life and business is nothing new but with Social Media and Social Technologies, it encourages us be transparent. As soon as people notice your twitter stream just looks like another way for you to market to your clients, they stop listening. Many, in time, will un-follow you.

We are tired of being bombarded with advertisements and are more interested in companies that care about social responsibility and their customers’ needs. Twitter is totally open and you can see very quickly if you like the way a business conducts themselves. It’s hard to come up with phony press releases in real time. Don’t we as citizens of this earth just want the truth? Twitter allows us to get past the opinions of the media outlets and get the facts right from the source.

We can now decide for ourselves what our own opinion is without influence from the media. That said, the media is working hard to get here. By the time they run the real-time news past all the decision-makers, they just cannot keep up anymore. Obviously, we do not believe everything we read and that’s why twitter is great – you get the news from people all around the world straight from the source with little or no agenda.

SocialMediaSean