Tweet value is what Nick Lachey makes it

I have a bit of a confession to make. A year ago at this time, I was 100 percent anti-Twitter. Yeah, I admit it. Allow me to explain. At the time, Twitter was a burgeoning social media tool that hadn't really proven anything to me. The way I saw things, Twitter was simply a way for narcissistic people to keep others informed about what's going on in their day-to-day lives, as if anyone really cared. I had been using Facebook's status updates at the time, but I found there was some real value to those as opposed to Twitter. I thought Facebook had a better system for sharing links and information, and that Twitter was just a way to be extremely self-centered while providing absolutely no value at all. That was my personal opinion.

Professionally, I was extremely against it. I had heard Twitter being tossed around as a journalistic tool last year, and that got my blood boiling. As a former journalist — and a journalist at the time this was all occurring — I was furious that any journalist would use someone's tweets as a source in what would otherwise be considered a respectable news story. Even when Twitter was gaining a lot of credibility with the situation in Iran last year, I was very critical of journalists using Twitter as a way to keep the public informed about important, credible information.

During my first semester of grad school, however, we were required to set up a Twitter account. I did so with much protest and apprehension. We used Twitter for a couple of class assignments — no big deal. And since I had the account, I figured I might as well use it for a bit what all the fuss was about. Of course, as time went on, I began to find that Twitter had value. I was able to get breaking news a lot faster and in more digestible snippets than I did by simply becoming a fan of a journalist or news outlet on Facebook, and that hit me right where I itched. So it was around September when I really came around on Twitter and changed my previous opinions on the social media outlet.

In doing more research since then (and opening my mind quite a bit more to other social media sites without coming to any conclusion before actually trying them) to better prepare myself to get hired for a social media marketing position after graduation this spring, I found a lot of great tips on how to use Twitter and, more importantly, how to add value to what it is you're tweeting about. One of my favorite sources for these types of tips is Mashable's Twitter Guidebook. Through these tips, I found that I could add more value to my tweets by engaging in a conversation, starting a conversation or sharing links that my followers would find valuable. Because of that, I largely stopped posting inane tweets with absolutely no conversation value at all.

Fast forward to this past weekend. I took a couple of days off from the blog — and coherent, sober life — to go down to New Orleans for New Year's. While sitting in my hotel bar a block off Bourbon Street, I was staring out the window. On the other side of the street, I see a familiar face. Could it be? No. Can't be. It is! It's Nick Lachey! Now, I'm not the type to be starstruck, and seeing Nick Lachey didn't change that, but I decided to tweet about it anyway. Here's what I wrote:

JayAdams70: Just saw Nick Lachey outside my hotel. I wanted to tell him to stay out of it.

Now, if anyone watches "The Soup" on E! you'll catch the reference to a quote they use quite often from some overly-sensitive, unrealistic teen show I can't think of the name of: "Stay out of it, Nick Lachey." Anyways, the point is I was trying to be sarcastic with a tweet that had absolutely no value to anyone and then go on about my day. If I have no value to offer through a tweet, why not at least try to make it witty, right? I didn't give the tweet a second thought until the next day when my BlackBerry started buzzing. I picked it up and saw that I had received an e-mail with a subject of "Hi, Jay." I opened it:

"My name is (name withheld) and I am the (position withheld) of Us Magazine. I am urgently trying to find out some details of Nick and Vanessa's trip to New Orleans and I see that you spotted them at your hotel. I wondered if you could please tell me which hotel it was and also what you observed. All in complete confidence, of course. I would never use your name. Thanks so much."

Well, I'll be damned. I've spent much of the past few weeks tweeting and retweeting social media links, thinking I'm upping my Twitter value, and a sarcastic, worthless tweet about Nick Lachey gets me hunted down by a national gossip magazine? I had several e-mail exchanges with this staff member of Us Magazine to get down the gritty, juicy details of my 15-second experience of watching Nick Lachey walk down a street. For those interested in what actually went down, here's what I sent to Us Magazine:

"Happy to help. They weren't staying at our hotel, but I saw them when they were walking by ours. We were staying at the Holiday Inn Chateau LeMoyne on Dauphine Street one block from Bourbon Street. Nick was walking and holding hands with a woman I couldn't identify. I don't keep up with a lot of celebrity news, so I couldn't really tell who she was. He had a drink in his other hand. They were walking with a fairly large man about five feet in front of them that I could only speculate was a bodyguard. When I saw them, the street was pretty empty save for a few people. One of them yelled to Nick and he turned around and quickly acknowledged the fan with a wave and a smile before quickly walking away. That's what I saw. Hopefully that helps. Let me know if you have any follow up questions."

Thrilling stuff, no? I didn't think so at the time. Honestly, I still don't think so. As I mentioned in my e-mail to Us Magazine, I don't follow celebrity news. If I had expanded on that thought, I would have likely included the fact that I find it to be mostly trashy and self-indulgent. BUT, just because there's no value to me, and just because I have personal opinions on a subject like this, doesn't mean there's no value to someone else. And through this experience, that's the biggest thing I take. Did I care that Nick Lachey was taking a leisurely walk down a New Orleans city block with Vanessa Minnillo? Absolutely not. I cared enough to point it out to my fellow barmates and then sarcastically tweet about it, but I found no value in what I saw. But someone did find value in it. That someone in this instance happened to be a national magazine browsing around Twitter for celebrity news and sitings. That tells me that, regardless of the topic, most tweets have some sort of value. Now, is the situation I described to you typical? Probably not. There was probably some luck (is luck really the word I'm looking for here?) involved with timing and keyword selection on my part. But it's an example of just how powerful and valuable Twitter can be even in seemingly value-less situations.

That doesn't mean that suddenly what you packed for lunch today is a valuable tweet that someone out there in Twitterland will strike up a conversation with you about. (So, please, stop tweeting about your lunch). But it does mean that tweet value has to be thought about in a broad way. Ask yourself some questions: What will others get out of what I have to say? Is what I tweet relevant? How can I make what I tweet valuable to followers, or even non-followers? What keywords can I use in my tweet so that others looking for this type of information can easily search for it and find it on Twitter? Is what I tweet, regardless of my own opinions of the situation, going to get me a paragraph in this coming Wednesday's Us Magazine?

The answer to the last question is yes.