I ran a course on Twitter for beginners recently and was amazed how many turned up and continue to want to learn about social marketing.
I use Twitter a lot and the analogy I gave the attendees on using it to their advantage was it’s like a newspaper where you can send out headlines to your story. Then, ‘lure’ visitors back to your website or blog to give them the full story, and usually they stay a while to find out what you do.
This sparked a debate of Google Plus as to whether it’s a good idea to have everything in one place like Google Plus or have an external blog or website? I am somewhere in the middle on this one and will continue to use my blog and websites for a while longer.
Surprising how the analogy really gets them thinking. Twitter for me is a great tool, and I use it every day for lots of different things and reasons which are mainly headlines of what I’m up to. I think this is the case with most people, unless you fall into these categories:
- Have a lot of time on your hands
- Love to go back and read stuff when you have the time
- Group stuff together to read later, this is me!
Using Twitter as an attention grabber is a tool because it’s harder to do this effectively on Google Plus, LinkedIn or Facebook. People expect more time and thought to have gone into the post, whereas on Twitter it’s the opposite, short precise headlines are the order of the day.
Think about how you want to use Twitter to communicate or whether it’s to get visitors to your website, blog, Google Plus, LinkedIn or Facebook page. It doesn’t really matter how you use it, but making sure you do is what counts. See you in the twitterverse at @keithmcmean
