Nearly every time I tell my friends, family, and even coworkers that I’m on Twitter the SAME thing happens: They look at me like I just told them that I secretly play Dungeons and Dragons in my basement. Or Farmville. Or maybe that I run a secret Star Trek book club on the weekends.
Let’s be real – Social Media brings the geek out (see my post on it) But after only being on Twitter since December – I’ve tweeted 1,416, gained 662 followers, and been recognized on 55+ lists – and I’ve become a believer in the impact that it can have professionally.
In addition to all the geekyness and noise – we are talking about an extremely powerful tool that is growing at an incredible rate. On the twitter blog this month @kevinweil (Analytics Lead at Twitter) detailed the growth using the metric of Tweets per Day: “Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.”
Friends, family, coworkers – let me tell you that is either a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, serious fake farmers, and a massive Klingon population- or, alternatively, we could be on to something here…
To be honest, I question why most of the same people giving me a hard time about being on Twitter aren’t driving themselves crazy thinking about what they are missing… about the potential opportunity cost of not being connected to people and companies that they otherwise may never have a relationship with. Think about this for a second – Are you in a job that sells services? Is your style the “consultative” sales approach? Do you have a medium to long sales cycles? Yes, Yes, & Yes and you are STILL not on Twitter? Beware – you are missing potential opportunities! Chris Brogan gives you the answer in his book, Trust Agents – page 165 – Twitter is a big time enabler by allowing you to Be In the Relationship Before the Sale.
Still not convinced? Check out Amber Naslund’s recent post on how she made $100K with Twitter. It’s the same idea – Twitter enabled Amber to get connected to people in industries that interested her, and in turn it provided a network of potential clients that she would have otherwise never met. She talked “about everything from work to cooking to horseback riding to beer and cars and pets and books.” She was in the relationship before the sale.
So I am diving in – building community, learning, sharing information, and developing relationships. I’m making friends. I am not even thinking about sales, but I know that when the time comes and someone needs a good project manager or HR consultant, maybe they’ll think of me and give me an opportunity. And you? Well, you might be working the phone or hanging out at the oh-so-predictable business mixer with a stack of business cards. Or you can join me, try it out – build a network – cultivate leads and watch relationships grow. Then the next time that someone questions you about twitter you can proudly say – That’s right I tweet…. and you should too!
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