Despite most of Savannahs popular opinion, Twitter is, in fact, not useless. I always laugh when I hear someone downplay Twitters value. They have hundreds of millions of users. Some people must be finding some value there, right?

So is it just a collection of hundreds of millions of self-indulgent Justin Bieber fans with lots of time on their hands? Well, yes, that segment is on Twitter. But just like everything else, you get out what you put in, and over the last 90 days, Ive seen the value firsthand.

I was always a casual Twitter user. I was fascinated by the simplicity mixed with the instant global reach the platform afforded, but I never spent much time using the service. I would look into what some people had to say and then check out for a few weeks (or months) since I wasnt really wrapped up in the conversations.

But then my goal changed. Several months ago, my team and I decided we would look for investors in our new business Bright Here. Bright Here is a unique social network we will launch in Savannah and expand from there, and venture capital investors are a natural fit for such an ambitious undertaking.

Because I dont have any close friends or family who do tech investing, I set a simple goal: Establish myself as an authority in my field in the eyes of the highest quality and quantity of tech investors possible.

Enter Twitter.

One thing that Twitter is great at is conversation discovery. Even those allergic to technology have a short learning curve and then can find people talking about virtually anything at all.

I quickly added about 100 investors and firms to the list of Twitter accounts I was following, and I simply observed the conversations as a spectator.

The more I observed, the more I participated. I realized that I could (at least in my opinion) contribute some value to a lot of these conversations with these people whom I held in high esteem.

The more I contributed to the conversation, the more I got out of those connections. And whats more, these investors and esteemed individuals started sending me messages back.

Originally posted here:
Jesse Bushkar: My personal Twitter success story