Graham - love the article on Twitter. I coach people in time management and work life balance and loved the visual of fishing and tweeting. It is easily the biggest waste of time around and can acutally do you more harm than good. If you are seen to be regularly on line 'chatting/tweeting' and clients are waiting for a response it works against you. I rarely see people convert time invested into money in the bank. Getting your bait organised can only help to make this happen. Thanks for some good food for thought from a fellow fish!
| Sea fishing with Twitter |
| Tuesday, 26 October 2010 19:37 |
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If we are to believe the bloom of social marketing gurus in this Spring of social networking, then we should all be twittering to our hearts' content, pushing up tweets on the Internet like a blanket of snowdrops from a frozen forest floor. There's no doubt that the use of social media has been grasped very firmly by many; especially us marketing, PR and advertising types. Although we are not alone, just look at the amount of trainers, recruiters and HR professionals twittering, the medium is now recognised as the latest critical marketing tool. I've spent time looking at Twitter and its value as a marketing tool. I've conducted tests by promoting my clients for free. I've looked at developing profitable relationships on-line and tried to directly win business through Tweeting. The various responses I've had, personal experience and researching authoritative perspectives has led me to conclude that Twitter is probably the most flexible, ungoverned, potentially direct and yet awfully ineffective tool in the whole marketing kit. Being a Tweeter is akin to angling; to be precise it's like sea fishing. You sit on the dock of the bay, cast out your line into the Twitter Atlantic and hope that you can fill your keep net. With a bit of look you attract a good shoal of valuable healthy fish, although in the early hours of your dabbling you are unlikely to catch anything more than passing interest from a jellyfish, a few crabs and a limpet. Getting you bait right is very important if you want to catch profitable fish. Good Twitter fishing can provide a business with a route to market that can be twice as fast as anything else. This is because, with the right use of bait (key words, information, help, advice) you can be caught by so many other anglers.Because every fish in the Atlantic is also fishing. Twitter exemplifies how the whole marketing-sales-purchasing model has changed, thanks in the main to the Internet. Once the fishing power lay in the hands of the advertisers who broadcast the irresistible and rare bait, they sat at the quayside and watched as immense shoals of fish came to feast. But the paradigm has shifted, fish have been given the power to angle for themselves; what's more, they are choosing where and when they go fishing. I actually do a bit of real fishing and on several occasions I end up going home frustrated and with a dry net. Why? I may have used the wrong tackle, the wrong bait or technique or even all three. One thing is certain – I failed to attract any fish. I failed to make my hook the one worth taking notice of and ended up a loser. It's exactly the same with Twitter. If all you want to do is cast out "see how great I am" or "please follow me because I'm really clever" or "join my twitter list because I always throw other people's bait around the pond" bait you will no doubt gather a good shoal around you. But as Shaa Wasamund suggested in a seminar she gave, are you in the right pond and are they the fish you really want in your shoal? Twitter can be used in a huge amount of different ways by different anglers, I really don't think there is a right or wrong way because if it works for you then fine; but what if it's not working? What if you are following the other fish doing the same things, swimming around the Atlantic looking for more fish and not adding value to your relationships? Mitch Joel wrote an excellent piece in his blog about being a Twitter snob. Rather than being pejorative, his idea of being a snob is to actually be selective with your followers and who you follow. In other words, choose the fish you want to keep and throw the others back. What is the point of filling your net with fish you can't eat or sell? What is the point in being in a shoal that is following bigger fish that take you places you don't want to go? As a marketing tool, Twitter "can" put you in the place where your potential customers are fishing. But before you go dabbling in the Twitter Atlantic you need to know why you are casting out there in the first place. If you are looking for new business, your bait has to be attractive to the fish you want, you have to be in the right place at the right time and you have to be talking the same fishy language. While the marketing relationships may have shifted, the basics are still the same – find your fish, see what they need, figure out how to give it to them and do it better than anyone else. What you also have to do is remember that the Twitter Atlantic is a damn big expanse of water and that it's far better to try and lure a shoal into a bigger trawler net with your twitter bait. If you consider your tweets as so many flies, lures, spinners and baited hooks that lead your shoal into your website, catalogue or event keep net, you will have a better view on how your twittering will bring about more profitable relationships. When I'm fishing for real, I cast out extra bait to make the fish feel confident in being able to eat in my swim. Twitter can work in the same way. Keep tweeting good stuff that is useful/helpful to people and they will see you as a valuable fish to follow, so that when it comes to wanting a service you provide, you are well up the list of other fish to choose from. Keep throwing out the wrong type of bait and all you will do is put the fish off, spoil your swim and end up losing your shoal. Twitter is a valuable marketing tool if used appropriately and you don't get lured into believing it's the only new way to go angling. Happy fishing and tight lines. 
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