In my quest to be heard by the pulsing, heaving masses, I have sought out books that promise to increase my blog traffic, Facebook page interest, and my Twitter following (these are the big three for me). These books are often boringly, drily written, don't apply to me (I'm not "marketing" a product; I'm just a wee writer trying to get my ideas out there), or are too technically confusing.Currently, I have a decent number of Facebook friends (almost 600), a promising number of Twitter followers (over 300), and a laughable lack of content on my blog (I like to joke that tumbleweeds pass across my blog). I know, I know; if I build it, they will come. But I'd like to play around with attracting the right audience in large numbers with nuggets of brilliance, before I set to building with too much ambition.
In this endeavor, I decided to home in on Twitter; it's still very relevant, and 140-letter posts are pretty adorable. It is quite a feat that in the last little while we can interlink so much of our social media, posting on Facebook and having it appear on Twitter, connecting LinkedIn to my blog and Facebook, et cetera. I figured if I can stoke the Twitter engine, it would fire up the rest.
For this reason, i was immediately attracted to the book Twitter Power by Joel Comm. I think the fact that my idol, Tony Robbins, wrote the rousing foreword was the second major selling point. If Tony backs this guy, he must be legit.
Truly, this book provides useful, commonsensical advice on how to utilize Twitter and why Twitter is so relevant. He speaks of the potential for building relationshops one tweet at a time, and how amazing it is to, haiku-like, write brilliantly in a very limited space. The best writers write with economy, and Twitter gives me the impetus to Tweet well. I wish very much that Hemingway could come back to life and open a Twitter account. It's modern literature and the quintessence of bon mots creation.
He highlights two types of followers that anyone self-promoting needs, and has a 30-day plan for taking a twitter user from "Johnny-No-Friends to a powerful social networking force". When he describes it as a "giant virtual water cooler" he puts the power of it in terms I can understand and appreciate.
Overall, he is accessible and engaging; my eyes tend to glaze over when given more technical advice on social media utilization, but his simpler wisdom of Twitter's value made me embrace his advice.
It is easy and understandable when he walks the reader through the simplest aspects of creating a self-brand, with the picture and profile and with choosing the type of following to achieve certain aims (in my case, making people laugh and think and want to read my blog). He lost me a little bit with his talk of APIs and data feeds, which was my fault more than his. I will attempt to penetrate that more fully in the future, because based on Comm's general savvy, it's probably very valuable information. I wish my eyes didn't glaze so readily during those parts of a communication technology tome.
The 30-Day Plan, the culmination of his motivating tips, moves slow for me: Day 1 just has the reader sign up, and he doesn't direct the reader to write tweets until day 4! After that, some gems appear, requiring a switch-up of approaches, a cultivation of certain types of followers, adding links, and eventually setting up a second account. Unfortunately, I don't feel that much of this list is aggressive or innovative enough to be ground-breaking. I feel that much of this is stuff I've attempted. Even so, i haven't attempted them all, and I haven't attempted them in this particular order, so I'll have to report back in 30-days' time to let you know if it geometrically increased my following. Perhaps I'll be reporting back to you in my private jet.
Ultimately, the most useful and fun thing I got out of this book was the list of "Power Twitterers" near the end. Although this book is a few years old and some on the list aren't the Tweeters they were in 2010, there were some entertaining and essential examples, such as Wil Wheaton and Guy Kawasaki. And with Comm's strategies, perhaps I can try to impress them with some direct reaching out.
On that note, and in conclusion, what I got out of this is that who you know is as important on Twitter as it is anywhere else.
Susan Silkwood
3 comments:
I had never thought of Twitter being such a useful tool for attracting viewers to a product, rather than just a method of informing "followers" of what one was doing at that specific point of time. I can see the value, as stated in your writeup, of linking the various social network medium such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
I personally don't use twitter but I do understand how it works. Ultimately it can be most beneficial when used as an advertising tool. Promoting what ones self has to offer as the product. I can see how if you utilize twitter the right way that it can be a great tool for getting your work out there and growing your fan base.
I never viewed Twitter as a marketing tool. It makes sense, I had just always thought of it as a way to let family and friends know what you are doing. I can see how this could be used as a valuable marketing tool. In my circle of friends and family, Twitter is not used at all except to look at what famous people are tweeting. I think it would be a very difficult task to get people to follow you if they don't know you outside of the online world or you aren't already famous.
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