One of my oldest, dearest (& baldest) friends has recently joined twitter. He’s had an account for a while but (and this is not unusual) it’s taken a while for him to come around to the idea of Twitter. He’s asking lots of spot on questions & one which came up is something I’ve meant to blog on for a while.
Why the different types of retweet?
Last week I had conversions with two different companies; both of whom were taking baby steps with their social media/web strategy. I found myself saying the same points (which luckily they found interesting) and I noted that many companies and professionals make the same sort of initial mistakes. On a cold Sunday evening with the fire blazing and a beer in my hand, I thought I’d rattle some of those out…
The other day someone asked me what was best for their business: what is Twitter? Or Facebook? Or Blogging? Should they be on Linkined? Which one “worked“?
The problem is that these are the wrong questions to ask.
It’s like asking:
Should I buy a pencil? Or a pen? Or a quill? Or a graffiti artists spray can? A gutenberg press? Or a plane which writes messages in the sky?
These are just tools. Tools for getting content out there. And tools can only be chosen when this is a clear task to perform; when we have identified the problem at hand then we can move swiftly on to choosing the most appropriate tools.
So where does this leave answering the original question?
Which one(s) work?
Well, it depends on what you are trying to achieve? What are your goals?
Are you trying to reach out to prospects? Perform customer service? Promote the brand? A mix of this?
And to which our your target audiences do those goals apply?
Only by a clear picture of the above would you be able to start considering the right tools for the job.
In an upcoming post I’ll go through some of the ways I help clients identify where to start.
Joel
The lead photo is from a car boot sale in Usk which I took with Instagram.
I’m pleased to announce the launch of a new website for a social media conference called Oi! which I’m helping out with.
Note: Yes, I am flush from the success of the Port80 Web Conference which I ran in May (“pow-wows for web folks“) but this event is nothing to do with me really, I just happened to bump into the organiser, Tony Dowling, on Twitter and, because I believed in the cause (more on that later) I decided to pitch in and help out. My contribution is mainly the website*.
Automatically splatting content from one social network to another rarely ends well. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc are all different types of networks with different constraints, different audiences etc. However, some folks feel that they have to have a presence on all networks but, they’ve not got enough time, so what’s the answer? Yes! Let’s hook them all up so you only have to update once!
Wrong answer…
Many people know that I’m a big fan of Twitter, more so than LinkedIn and certainly more so than Facebook. One thing I’ve always liked about Twitter is its simplicity – you really aren’t loaded down with tonnes of functionality; which is lucky as it takes long enough to get your head around Twitter as it is! If they made it more complex then newbies would just give up.
The other day I was doing some one to one coaching with Harry Holland and we stumbled across something which is perfect evidence of something that I’ve been trying to preach for a while; Internet Strategy. When people ask what I do, I have been known to say “Internet Strategist*” as I’m trying to convey that this aint just about websites; this is about joined up thinking across all of your online presence.
Am flattered to have got a piece into the current edition of .Net magazine whittering on about Instagram. Sure it’s only a small spot shoe horned in somewhere towards the back but it’s still there, and it’s important to celebrate the victories!
Over the past couple of years I’ve become increasingly convinced that the old methods of marketing and selling (features/advantages/benefits, always-be-closing etc etc) are becoming much less relevant. People have had a hat full of being sold to; there has to be a better way. And that better way for a lot of companies (and me) is about authenticity, helpfulness and story telling; building on the principle that people buy from people.
For ages now I’ve been convinced that video provides a great opportunity for getting your authentic message out there. Perhaps you are not yet convinced about it, perhaps you are convinced but don’t technically know where to start, or perhaps you are the worst kind (like me) because you know its value, know where to start, but just haven’t pulled your finger out yet. I’ll be putting this straight from next week!
Credit: I came across this hot link on Twitter via the all round, social media power house, Mark Schaefer.
