I've been a big fan of Twitter from the point I first started using it (h/t Evan ... thanks for nothing). I can't say much for any personal branding benefits from my 20,000 or so Tweets (I'll leave that to my personal branding consultant).
I use it because it's fun--a great way to find information and pretty much chat with anyone. Being a chatty person by nature, I thoroughly enjoy this medium. As to the people who are driven by marketing purposes to use Twitter I sort of feel bad for them. Going down this road you will either find yourself in the town of disappointed expectations, or you will have a fairly staid and boring Twitter experience. If you signed up after attending a webinar then this is a triple whammy.
For no reason in particular, for the past couple of weeks, I scaled back on my Twitter usage. Shockingly, life went on, and pretty much stayed the same. I survived. It's sad and a tragically first world thing to say, but it was sort of a strange and liberating realization that I didn't need to send out 10-15 tweets a day. I also (coincidentally, on Twitter) came across Ta-Nehisi Coates' post on leaving Twitter: "I left Twitter." It's meta, but Ta-Nehisi was a really fun person to follow and a prolific twitterer. Here's what he had to say about why he left:
And so at times I'd find myself babbling, taking no real account of who I was babbling to, or what I was babbling about. All of it wasn't babbling. Twitter was great for improving my French, for instance. But I think the sheer ease with which one could speak--to thousands of people--was a problem. It should never be that easy for me. I must be forced to think. I must remember that I don't talk for the benefit of other people, but, primarily, for myself.
Maybe he'll be back, and I can't say I feel exactly the same way about it, but food for thought.
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