Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

I suppose that’s quite a revealing question – particularly about my current business position! And, although I’m not particularly being kept awake at night I am increasingly finding that I am constantly thinking about and planning for the business.

I recently launched my new website, created for me by the wonderful Sergio at The Web Showroom. And, whilst I am thrilled with the results and have received nothing but positive feedback for the website, I had hoped that once the process of rebranding was over things would settle down nicely and I could continue to focus on my work.

But, as business owners what is our work? Is it the skill we have for what we physically do for a job, in my case PR and business communication, or is it something much bigger than that? Read the rest of this entry »

At the recent Working Women’s Network ‘Effective Online Marketing’ workshop, the issue of Twitter was raised briefly. It came to light that lots of people had heard of Twitter but not many really understood much about it.

So, as the Working Women’s Network’s resident Queen of Twitter (J) I thought I’d give you a few pointers about how this popular social network can help you with your business.

First, a little bit of background on exactly what Twitter is. Basically, it is a microblogging site that allows you to post ‘Tweets’ of up to 140 characters with the premise of saying what you are doing. For any of you who are FaceBook users, it is similar to updating your status.

At least, this was how Twitter started. I would contend that it has developed into something so much more than just posting inane statements about what you had for lunch. What it has become is a powerful way to share information, learn new things and develop new relationships for your business.

So, how can you use Twitter for your business? Firstly, let’s look at some basics.

• Joining Twitter: head to http://twitter.com and hit the Join button
• Enter your name (make sure you add your first and last so people can find you)
• Select a user name. There is some debate over whether you should use your personal name or business name. Some suggest that if you are using Twitter for business you should use your business name. I use my personal name (@karenmorris) as I feel that it is easier to connect with people being yourself. You can promote your business in your bio.
• Complete your bio. This is important. For people to connect with you they need to know that you have similar interests and ideas. It’s good to give people an idea of what you do as well as some personal interests
• Add an ‘avatar’, your photo. It’s a bit daunting to have your photo on the interwebs but I have my business promotion photo as my avatar. Again, I feel this is important for people to get to know me. I do follow a lot of people who use their logo or other pictures but it’s nice to know who you’re chatting to. It also makes it easy to see at a glance who’s tweeting at you!

Okay, so you’re on Twitter, what next? The first and probably most important thing to take on board is that, just like any other relationship-building exercise, Twitter is not an instant broadcast medium for telling everyone how wonderful you and your products/services are. It takes time to build a network of followers (I’ll come to what that is in a moment) and, to build a good network of followers it needs to be done through genuine connection and interaction. There are lots of ‘get 400 followers a day’ schemes out there and they come in many forms. I wouldn’t advise taking any of them up as having thousands of followers who have no connection to you is like a fashionista attending a tech conference!

So, what are followers and how do you get them? Followers are like ‘friends’ on FaceBook or ‘contacts’ on LinkedIn. Basically, they are the people you connect with. To get started on Twitter you can do various searches either for people you already know or for people in your industry. Then, once you start following people you need to start interacting. You can tweet about things that you are reading that would be interesting to people in your line of work, things that are in the news or whatever you think will spark a conversation. It’s also good to see what other people are saying and then reply to them.

To get you started some great people to follow, who know a lot about social media are @SilkCharm (Laurel Papworth), @problogger (Darren Rowse) @SuziDafnis from ABN @sammutimer, who is probably the MOST enthusiastic social media champion you’ll ever come across, and the list could go on and on. And, it goes without saying, feel free to follow me @karenmorris! Once you follow, join the conversation by replying to tweets people make and the follow-backs will start flowing.

How do you know who to follow? Well, the rules of Twitter are really very similar to real life. By looking at a person’s twitter stream you can get a feel for things that interest them and whether you would have a connection. I have a few different types of people I follow. I connect with quite a few PR people, the sharing on Twitter is phenomenal and doing the same job as someone else doesn’t make us competitors, it somehow brings us together. I also follow a few rugby people such as @JTActiveMngt, who is also a great marketer and champion of getting Australia active again, @willcarling (yes, THE Will Carling, for those who know anything about rugby, and he found me first!). Then there are people I have found through conversations with others and have found that we have things in common.

Do you have time? This is a BIG question. Getting involved in Twitter can be a time-draining exercise. It is very easy to get sucked into many conversations, follow links that people post to interesting articles and find that the day is half gone. It is all about discipline and how to manage your day. In the early stages when you are still trying to build a following and make connections it will probably require more time and effort but after a while you can just join in for short periods and still maintain your profile. Using apps like TweetDeck or Destroy Twitter to manage your Twitter groups and messages also makes it a little less time consuming.

How do you follow the rules? Like any other networking situation there are several rules of engagement and terminology that take a little bit of getting used to, especially all the terminology. The best advice I can give you for this is to go and read some of the many, many blogs out there that tell you exactly how it’s done. The best place to find out all there is to know about Twitter is a site called Mashable. This is an endless source of information about social media in general. Sam Mutimer also posted a great blog recently about the art of retweeting (I did mention specific terminology!) and I came across another great blog today by @NickBowditch who runs a family travel business on the Central Coast, on 30 things I wish I’d known before I joined Twitter.

I could go on ad infinitum about Twitter and how to use it but I think the best way to find out is to do it for yourself. It may seem a little scary at first and not worthwhile but, once you have started to connect with people it becomes a great resource for ideas, information and business. And, if you get stuck you can always send me a message!

Happy tweeting!

Until next time.

Karen

Karen Morris is the Working Womens Network media officer. She runs Inscriptions, a copywriting and PR Consultancy, is a contributor to Flying Solo and is a wife and mother to three active boys. She loves life and work and has an insatiable appetite to learn all things new, especially all things 2.0.