Seconds after posting this tweet: “Hard drive failed. Vacation photos may all be lost. Super sad right now. :(” and “Has anyone been able to retrieve data from a CF card that had been formatted in camera?” I received so many replies from the twitter community of photographers offering support and advice.

Below is just a snapshot of some replies I received within minutes of posting my question.

What is twitter? Well, twitter is a lot of things but ultimately it is what you make it. Basically, users can post a tweet (like a status update) limited to 140 characters. Unless you protect your tweets, what you post is open to the public. You can “follow” other twitter users(to keep up with their tweets) and they can “follow” you too with just one click. No authorization needed, unless the users tweets are protected. So, now you can follow all your favourite bloggers, photographers, celebrities, news sites, friends, organizations and businesses who also use twitter.

Those are just the basics. Once you start, you’ll find a plethora of other ways to use twitter, lots of third-party applications integrated with twitter and other benefits. Check out http://www.twitip.com/ to get started.

Anyone can be a twitter user but as a photographer, there are many reasons you should too.

1. Get to know other photographers - I have met hundreds of wonderful photographers of every level through this medium. Start off by checking out all the people one of your friends follow and build your following list there. Once you sign up, you can see my follow list here. The key to having a rewarding twitter experience is to follow other users. Once you follow a user, their general tweets show up on your homepage and you can read about what they’re up to easily. You can really get to know someone by reading their tweets.

2. Other photographers can get to know you - This getting-to-know-others deal can and should go both ways. It’s up to you what you want to tweet about but personally, I tweet about my daily life (that’s the getting to know you part), about photography and re-tweet interesting posts by other users to continue the sharing and building of relationships.

3. Ask questions and get answers - Once you have built relationships with people (it comes really naturally on twitter), ask a question and you’ll get some responses right away. It’s faster than email because of the 140 character limit. It’s easy to type a few words as a response without feeling bogged down with writing a full email. Short and sweet. When you’re using twitter on their default webpage (there are many twitter clients and applications which have different user interfaces) click on your @yourusername to see where your name is mentioned. This is how others can reply to you. A user can also send you a private direct message as long as you are following that person.

4. Announce blog updates - I don’t know about other users, but when someone announces that they have updated their blog and link to it, I usually check it out and try to leave a comment. I don’t use an RSS reader (too many blogs to read!) and I only have so much free time but I’ve noticed that I now read blog entries by twitter users who announce it. I don’t know if others do the same but if you tweet that you have blogged, I will probably read it.

5. Improve your photography - If you’re following the right people and organizations, you can learn a lot of new techniques, keep up-to-date with the photography world and challenge yourself to constantly work on improving your skills.

6. Share your knowledge and experiences - If you like to help others and are willing to contribute to the community of photographers, twitter is a great way to do it.

Those are just a few reasons I think you should use twitter. Give it a try. If you have already tried it, try it again. That’s what I did. The first time I signed up, I was going about it all wrong and gave up. I’m so glad I gave it a second chance. Since then, I have met many wonderful international and local photographers (online and in real life), started second shooting weddings and recovered images from a formatted CF card (that just happened) among other things.

If you sign up or if you’re already a user, I hope you’ll follow me so I can get to know you too!

Laura is a Vancouver wedding and portrait photographer. Visit laurahana.com.