Let’s face facts: there is no way I am going to convince you to ditch your Facebook for Twitter. It’s just not going to happen. Everyone and their mother, heck even their grandmother, is on Facebook now. Here’s the catch, I’m not here to tell you to choose Twitter over Facebook. You need both. A lot of people like to compare the two, and even though there are similarities, Twitter is much more than “Facebook lite.” I’m sure the fact that you are on a computer, reading a blog, means you understand the importance that the internet and social media play in our lives. People have even begun to call it a Social Media Revolution.

Now, while Facebook is still the big dog in the social media park, Twitter’s starting to move up in the pack. Twitter is an incredibly valuable resource when building your personal brand.

First let’s take a look at what makes Twitter different from Facebook. Here you can take a look at how the top five platforms (Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn) stack up against each other. For now I’m going to focus on just Twitter and Facebook, since they are the one’s that seem to be compared the most. Every time I bring up Twitter to someone who has yet to embrace the 140 character party I get a similar response: “Why do I need Twitter when I already have Facebook? It’s basically the same thing but with less.” Well the fact that Twitter has “less” is one of its benefits. Less characters in your posts can lead to thinking more about what you have to say because you have less space to say it in. In a perfect world every tweet would be written like a headline, getting to the good stuff in the just the right amount of words. While I do admit we don’t live in a perfect world, the character limit does push us in the right direction.

Another benefit Twitter has over Facebook is the fact that it is much easier to engage with a broader audience. On Facebook someone has to first be your fan or your friend to get the messages you are putting out there, but on Twitter it is much easier to join conversations or start new conversations with people who may or may not be following you. Back to my perfect world for a moment: imagine I have written my perfect headline tweet about a bit of news I picked up and I decide to tweet @AndersonCooper about it. He could see that, retweet it to his followers, follow me back and marry me. Now not only do I have a silver fox for a husband, but all of his followers have the chance to see my message and decide to follow me as well. Again, I digress, we are not in a perfect world, but aside from the marriage that scenario is not entirely ridiculous. Hey, a girl can dream right? My point is that on Twitter it is entirely possible for your message to be picked up by someone with a huge following and reach a much broader audience than you yourself have.

Here is a group of articles covering everything from the basics of Twitter to its impact on cross-cultural engagement and influence on marketing. Also you should definitely follow @BeckyMerola on Twitter if you want to watch my budding romance with AC in 140 character increments. Or at least read something snarky about how much I don’t like birds.