Oh microblogging… My biggest source of procrastination. Twitter and Tumblr are absolutely where I spend the most of my time on the internet, even more than Facebook lately. I think that Twitter is the ultimate social media tool. I love following my favorite companies, my friends, my school, and celebrities all in one place. I don’t know why I care about what Neil Patrick Harris ate for breakfast, but for some reason I end up reading about it. I especially love when companies tweet secret sales or discount codes. I feel like it’s my own little sale.
Paying for sponsored tweets seems pretty lucrative to me. The fact that your business’ twitter is what pops up when certain keywords are searched could potentially reach thousands of people. The only real problem I see with that is that it’s pretty obvious that it is an advertisement and a lot of people (including me) avoid those. However, there are people who would click on the link and that’s a market it would not be smart to avoid.
The best thing about microblogging from the business perspective is that it’s completely free while possibly reaching thousands or even millions or potential customers. The worst thing is trying to fit your message into 140 characters. Part of my internship duties are to run the company’s twitter account and it is so hard to condense everything into such tiny sentences! Usually I just give a little blurb and then link to the blog post or article. That’s usually the easiest way. It’s especially difficult because I refuse to use text speak in a business accounts tweets, I just don’t feel like the message would be as trusted that way.
The corporate twitterers section on page 266 was a life-saver when I felt completely stuck. Checking out the interesting ways they have used microblogging helped me get out of my tweeters block and got the creative juices flowing!
Social Media Scoop! 
“Tweeters block.” Awesome. I think promoted Tweets and people getting paid to promote things in Twitter sucks and I hate it. I’m afraid it’s going to ruin the channel. I’m with you. I like following bunches of people/things all in one place, so I love it too. Your experience at your internship is invaluable, glad you’re learning a lot about Twitter. What works on Twitter can apply elsewhere — or when the next social media channel is developed: keep it short, engaging, enlightening or entertaining. Be real.