This is pretty cool. Check out my followers, my pal Toby Bloomberg tweeted this. What’s scary is that I can associate a lot of names with avatars. I think in the future- we all should carry around sandwich boards with our Twitter avatars at conferences.
Its not the technology that drives the train, its people. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Linkedin are nothing without them and their participation. Don’t ever forget that.
Sometimes we become so enamored with technology that we overlook what makes technology “work”. What do you think?
People inspire us, at least they do for me. The beauty of that statement is that the platform for inspiration is there to be used for FREE. It’s Twitter. You don’t think so? Well, last week I tweeted the following 10 thoughts. They originated from and during conversations or threads of conversations that emanated from Twitter.
Now you might be thinking, “damn, this guy is full of himself.” On the contrary- Actually I see these thoughts on paper, and amazed to a certain degree that came from me! The cool thing is-they came with the help of the brilliant minds of the people I talk with every day in 140 character bursts. Check it out.
Some of these I restored for the benefit of this post, whereas they were truncated tweets. I look at these and each would actually make good blog post titles. Hmmm.. not a bad idea which emanated from…
It pains you to read what’s going on. You hate watching the news. Prospecting and looking for new clients is becoming more difficult. The clients or prospects you are able to talk with are all giving you the same story.
Sound familiar? So what can you do? Maybe you need to change your focus, change your tact, change the way you are thinking? Perhaps rather than thinking about you and your company, you should think about the company you’re going after and THEIR customer. Or that companies employees? What can make them more productive? How can they do what they do better? How can they talk to THEIR customers and prospects better? Don’t think of you business process, think of theirs! Think about the client. They need your help, they just might not admit it.
These are not normal times. Thinking in a conventional Web 1.0 manner is not going to get it done.
In social media circles, we’re all guilty of back slapping and having a good ole’ time hanging with our peeps. But don’t we want to have clients? Of course we do! But if you get it, and I get it, and we both are always agreeing with each other, has anyone bothered to ask, “Do they get it?” If we are constantly talking to each other, then a few things are happening.
1) We don’t know if your prospective clients are there in the room listening
2) They might be too intimidated to ask a question, or scared to ask a dumb question
3) They might not even be there
4) You are talking to people who are of like mind. Peers not potential clients.
Go Find people who don’t understand and who don’t know, but want to. They are the one’s that will benefit the most.
How many people sell first and then try and get to know the customer later? Not many. In the halls of social media, the same holds true. If we look at Twitter and Blogging as 2 very prime and very visible examples-the best way to market yourself or a product is to get to know the people that you might want to sell or market to FIRST.
But there’s one catch, actually two…
First, If you are blogging- sure you could write a great post with a great hook, but unless you are doing some serious social posting of that post-no one is going to read it unless..You make and take the time to visit other blogs and get to know the writer and comment on that writer’s post, and develop a dialogue and a relationship with that blogger. As a blogger- You need to change your monologue to a dialogue.
Second, If you are on Twitter, the following occurs whether you realize it or not. This is how your relationships start. They start with you and your effort.
But it ultimately will end up like this.
You, in the middle of a whole lot of conversations. What you need to decide is how are you going to “manage” that noise. Why? If we have a one on one conversation, you have my undivided attention. Add another person, and now my attention has been divided, add another, divide again, and so on and so forth. Until ultimately you are essentially having conversations with 10%-20% of the people you either follow or that follow you.
Think about that. If I follow 100 and 100 follow me- At any point in time I may have conversations with only 10-15% of those people. Conversations consisting of more than one tweet between us. If that’s the number I have to work with- shouldn’t I try to make the best of those interactions? Shouldn’t you? Quit tweeting about nothing.
Monologues to Dialogues.
For those of you who are tired of reading “another” blog post about Twitter, move on. For those of us who realize the power of the platform and want to leverage it as another tool, another means or another way to enhance communications and the relationships that may bubble up from them, Keep reading.
Real quickly, understand this:
With Twitter
1) There is no perfect way to use it.
2) There is no absolute “right” way to use it.
3) There are plenty of wrong ways to use it.
Rather than go into a lengthy discourse on each of these points, lets leave it at this. If the way that you are currently using Twitter is working for you, then I applaud you and for the most part I would not suggest you change anything. Keep it going and keep enjoying it. However, if you are seeing nothing from your foray into Twitter, then perhaps you need to “change what you are doing”.
It’s real simple.
If you are NOT having conversations, NOT exchanging opinion, NOT having great discussions, or NOT sharing links, and NOT meeting people and NOT networking and NOT taking 140 characters to the next level-Then you may be using it in the wrong way. What do you think?
So decide right now. Do I want to continue to get nothing out of this? If you want to continue to waste your time and everyone else’s, then keep doing what you are doing. I’m not sure why you would, but hey, we still get SPAM right?
If you want to change the way you are currently using Twitter, there are tons upon tons of solid links on the proper use of it and the benefits associated with it. They are not hard to find, but these should get you going.
I have to add perspective So I include Guy’s post about Twitter
Direct Marketing Observations 