Social Media - Twitter

Why do people use Twitter?

I understand celebrities, companies, and events because they all have something to sell you. They want an audience for new projects, new products, and/or to raise money because of the first two.

I follow the local news twitter feed because I'm a commuter and like checking the traffic report before I head out. I follow event pages because I'm already planning on attending that event. I follow companies to find out when something is being released/renewed/cancelled. I follow groups to get links to relevant pictures and webpages. I follow celebrities because they're often funny and really nice to their followers, and you occasionally get the inside scoop on upcoming shows. I follow my friends because Twitter suggested it, but most of my friends don't tweet and the one who does uses Twitter/Facebook as more of a Marketing tool for her Real Estate business which kind of makes her more of a company.

I understand that you can tweet private messages but I never have and am not sure I know how to. I have unlimited text messages, I usually have access to my email or Facebook, and if all else fails I always have an actual phone to use.

I only have 7 followers - occasionally as high as 10. About 3 are friends, 1 is a co-worker, and the rest are companies trying to sell me things based on my profile hoping that if they follow me I'll reciprocate and follow them.

I tried scheduling a bunch of tweets in advance - I'm very proud of my casual Friday tee and would like more people to be aware of my awesome tee collection - but it quickly failed because my interest waned after setting up 5 or 6.

I've tweeted about blog posts I've written and if I use the right tags it has been retweeted. I've tweeted and retweeted to win contests - still haven't won anything.

I think I'm missing something.

Looking online, reasons to use Twitter include:

• To follow trends i.e. hashtags
• Interesting people - not just celebrities
• Creative outlet
• Access to celebrities
• Instant news reports - [excellent reason, but be careful the source is reliable and if the report interests me I follow up with a legit source elsewhere later]
• Short attention span - limit of 140 characters removes TL;DR comments [why anyone would make those comments confounds me]
• Meet new people
• Sending out thoughts to everyone in the social network can be empowering [but how many actually get read/make a difference]
• Easy to use
• Allows for mini-reflections instead of massive blog posts
• And many, many more

I agree with many of these things: I get tips and updates from the people I follow, I feel more connected to the celebrities I like. I don't know about easy to use [I seem to have some kind of mindblock due to my obvious wordiness] and hashtags confuse me: do I create my own or use already created ones? I haven't met any new people, I haven't found an easy way to post pics so creativity is out, I never write TL;DR cause if I had time to make that comment I had time to read the whole post.

Why do or don't you use Twitter? Any tips to make it work better for me?

I kinda prefer tweetcaster as opposed to Twitter itself cause it more easily allows me to schedule posts and quote tweets when I reply to them. What app do you use?