You are what you tweet!!

Social media is the new horizon of news, and networking. It is fastly becoming the 'it' way to find out what is happening in the world. Part of me enjoys the fact that I can follow people and find out what the population thinks and says about current topics, but about 20% is still scared to commit 'too much' of myself to the social media world.

This week our assignment for PR Campaigns was the 'Twitter Challenge' where we had to tweet a total of 35 times in a week and find 25 new PR professionals or businesses to follow. After doing this challenge I can easily see why people are addicted to tweeting. Twitter is the one place where people can go and interact with others without the time delay of email or the clutterness of facebook and myspace. For those that are on the go it provides the perfect balance of news highlights and updates on friends. You could say that it is like Facebook- Lite.

Twitter is what you make of it. I think people are attracked to it because they can control what the see and hear by who they follow. It is completely personal and I would venture to say that no two twitter feeds are alike.

My twitter feed consists of classmates, pr professionals, pr agencies and organizations, news networks, sports teams and a couple of celebs.  Over the course of this challenge I have come to realize the value of of follow pr professionals and agencies.  The majority of them tweet interesting and valuable tips or articles about my field of study.  I have found that they also post job openings and internships!  

Before this challenge I would tweet whenever I remembered to or whenever the thought crossed my mind and then I would spend a hour or two seeing what I had missed since I last updated. Now that am following more people in the public relation field I am starting to understand the value of twitter in terms of networking.

Twitter is a valuable resource that has now become a part of my daily 'email check' time. I think that this challenge would have been eaiser for me if I had internet access on my phone. My days are so busy that I rarely get a chance to sit at a computer during the course of day. For my next phone I think I will consider paying the extra money to have access to the internet and to be connected with the world all the time and not just when I have a chance.

 Follow me @mariannamiller on twitter!!