Why should you be active on Twitter?

After I left my job last year, I wanted to learn SAAS building and sales. That's what I love. But I only knew the typical route of startups - VC funding, pitching, hiring, etc. And I wasn't interested in all this at the time. My son was just 6 months old. I wanted a path that lets me enjoy the best time of life while I learn something I am passionate about. I used to think this was an odd situation. Who else will have a situation like this? Somehow, I ended up discovering people on Twitter who shared the very same mindset. Some of them had actually done this already. They have documented their journey on Twitter to help people like me.

Twitter is a unique network in its way. We hear about it in the news for all wrong reasons like Twitter wars of celebrities, politicians and abusive trolls, etc. But in fact, more than social, Twitter is the greatest professional network (sorry Linkedin). A website sharing 140 characters at a time can change the course of your life.

Based on my observations of using Twitter, I am sharing how smart people are using Twitter to advance their careers -

1. Test ideas

Many people use Twitter to test their ideas for their products. e.g. many creators tweet a few times to see if an idea resonates with people. Then refine it using their feedback. Then incrementally invest into writing blogs, email lists, and then a product. This avoids wasting years creating something that no one wants.

2. Build community

This writing course - Ship 30 for 30 is a great example of that. @dickiebush and @Nicolascole77 started with a simple problem that people want to get better at writing and turned into a great community of people sharing the same problem and helping each other. Twitter is buzzing with thousands of communities on crypto to gardening.

3. Discover and get discovered

You may have heard a famous example of Ryan Graves getting hired as employee #2 of Uber via a tweet. Twitter is a great way to build your personal brand and attract opportunities. There are many examples of Twitter doing its magic and connecting people for hiring, business deals, and acquisitions.

Finally, to achieve this you need to use Twitter correctly. You can follow me on Twitter to learn about that ;)