Is Twitter a useful business tool or a big waste of time?
If you’re following the social media blogs, you’ve seen an intense debate about the ROI and the use of Twitter and other social media in business. Maybe it doesn’t matter, since many Fortune 100 companies are perceived as weak on Twitter. Like many people, I was hesitant when launching my own twitter experiment in July on my corporate blog, but it didn’t take long to see why it’s worth my time, both profesionally and personally.
Think of Twitter this way — imagine you’re at a conference of thought-leaders in your industry. You’re walking around the room and hearing great conversation and topics you care about. You see one of the leading experts talking to a small circle of people and the conversation turns to a really interesting study they read, or an article that’s related to the topic. Since you’re so interested in the topic, the expert grabs a drink napkin and writes down a short summary, along with the URL for you, so you can read the article yourself. As you move about the room from conversation to conversation, the experts jot down the articles on more drink napkins, and you leave the party with a stack of references to things to read. When you get home, you see that some of the notes are random, like “wow, the shrimp looks great”, you flip past those and spend time reading the articles and getting great ideas.
Now imagine that you’ve entered a football stadium on game day. Same thing happens. As you walk around, people hand you messages about what they’re talking about. The sports team you’re rooting for, the opposing team, the hot dogs at the concession stand, how people are dressed, the traffic on the way to the game, the weather, etc. You walk out of the stadium with 50,000 notes, some interesting, some not, some annoying, some funny, some relevant, but mostly things you don’t really care much about.
If you’re not seeing the value of Twitter, consider whether your approach has you wandering around the stadium, or mingling at the thought-leader conference.
If you’re not using Twitter yet, just try it. Mashable has a great Twitter guide to get you started. When you’re reading a blog you like, follow the author on Twitter. Use the new Lists feature to follow multiple people at once. @Scobleizer has developed great lists to follow, following him is a great place to start.
Who are your favorite people to follow?
Follow me on Twitter @StephKinHR
