How to Use Twitter When You Have Nothing to Tweet

Have all your friends signed up for the big blue bird and inundated you with updates on what they ate for breakfast? Does Twitter seem like nothing more than a desperate cry for attention from people who were hugged too much as children? Don’t worry – you’re not alone. In fact, most people who sign up for Twitter stop using it after their first tweet.

However, there are ways to tweet that don’t involve informing the world about your rash that just won’t go away. Here are five to get you started:

News Aggregator

Twitter is full of organizations that do nothing but tweet the news.  CNN (@cnnbrk) and Breaking News (@BreakingNews) are only a few of the major users you should follow.  A solid Twitter news account will update often enough to keep you informed, but space out their tweets enough so you’re not checking your feed every 47 seconds.

In addition to the aforementioned outlets, the BBC (@BBCBreaking) and NPR (@NPRNews) Twitter feeds should satiate your hunger for 140-character news bites.

To-Do List

Not everything you tweet has to be public. By making your Twitter account private and ignoring/denying all follow requests, you can turn your personal life-stream into a personal inbox of actionable items. Update your list via the web, or download an application to your iPhone or BlackBerry and tweet your to-dos from the road. As long as you can get online, you’ll always be able to access your list.

Crowdsourcing En Masse

Do you need an answer quickly and you don’t feel like scanning pages of Google results to find it? Tweet your question and see if anyone else can help. It’s not guaranteed that you’ll find what you’re looking for (especially if you have a low follower count), but with the right wording and a few strategically placed hashtags, a complete stranger might become the guru you’ve needed.

This can come in especially handy if you’re looking to either improve or change your career and are looking for some advice. More often than not, people will be more than happy to share their experience and wisdom to those seeking guidance.

Plan for Everything

Tell your friends (you know, the ones who bugged you to sign up in the first place because all the cool kids were doing it) that if they want to see a movie, they should post the showtime and theater information to Twitter. Coordinating meeting times and locations via Twitter is one of the best ways to use the technology. Conference and trade-show attendees often use the service as a way of informing others where and when discussion panels and lectures are being held.

See Where Time Has Flown

If you do contract work or you just need to see where your time really goes, post the activities you’re currently working on to your Twitter account. Tweet when you start, tweet when you end and then add up the total hours spent. If your clients question the hours for which you’ve charged them, point them to your feed and let them see for themselves.

Have some good Twitter ideas of your own? Share them in the comments – and bonus points for keeping them 140 characters or less.