Twitter: I have been tweeting for a year or two, cern to anybody but me. I had no clue what all the fuss was about. Then I encountered 9Clouds and one of the brother founders, Scott Meyer, who ran a webinar on using Twitter for business. My eyes opened a crack as I saw the little blue bird fluttering around. My social marketing journey is only just beginning.
Learning by doing
Armed with enthusiasm and very little knowledge I have lunged in. Among serveral attempts at social media, I am tweeting like mad, but I have no idea of the effect beyond seeing the number of my tweets multiplying and the my number of followers starting to pick up. No new business and no new sales, but more correspondence.
My tweets have been about using social media to promote my ebook, Telling Startup Stories on Amazon, observations on entrepreneurship, comments on the tweets of others and direct messages to individuals whom I have found with similar interests to my own.
Waiting and Wondering
As I carry on determined to make social marketing, and specially Twitter, work for me and convinced that social media can work for me, I step off the edge without confidence and a great deal of hope. The more I work in the field of entrepreneurship, the more I am convinced about the social importance of what we do. Concern for ‘the other’ has to be part of of how we approach business. Social marketing at the highest level is about having that concern, rather than simply blindly doing social promotion.
Expected Benefits, Nonetheless
One way that I hope to get a particular social marketing benefit is that I am tracing others with my interests in startup storytelling and can reach out to them. I can see how others treat my subjects both on Twitter and by going to their websites and blogs to see more detail. I am getting some retweets and hope to get more.
On the few occasions when I have posted graphics, it would appear that they attract more attention than simple text. Of course I am multiplying the message by connecting my blog and putting out similar information through other media such as LinkedIn, or Pinterest, but as yet the cumulative effect is marginal.