As you know, I don’t have a Facebook or Instagram. I deleted both of them over a year ago. But I still have a Twitter. I should point out that I don’t use Twitter as a replacement for Facebook or Instagram. For instance, I don’t use Twitter to socialize with friends – we text, talk on the phone, email, or meet in person. I don’t use it to post personal pictures and events from my life – I’d rather do that on my own website and monetize it myself. And I don’t have the Twitter app on my phone – only on my work devices.
The first reason I’m on Twitter is to post links to my articles. Even without a lot of followers, the cash tag feature on Twitter is very useful for getting my content in front of people who have a demand for it. An article I write about a stock might not show up on the first page of Google search, but it can be the top post on Twitter for a limited amount of time. Twitter also has great tracking metrics that allows me to see how many people have viewed the tweet and clicked the article link.
The second reason is that there are many business leaders, journalists, and prominent people in finance that are surprisingly easy to reach on Twitter. I’ve already had some interesting conversations with people I thought would be much harder to reach. Technically, I could just email them, but I’ve found that people tend to speak a lot more candidly on Twitter’s messaging system than they do on email. Maybe it’s because they associate email with business and formalities whereas Twitter is not; or maybe it’s because their secretary manages and filters their email whereas their Twitter is personally in their pocket.
The third reason is that there are some traders and investors who post insightful content on Twitter. I never follow anyone’s trades or take their advice but it’s still interesting to see what they’re saying about the markets at any given point in time. However, I prefer when people have their own websites; I have a long list of blogs I follow and read when I have time.