Should I Be Tweeting?

I was asked to give a talk this morning on social media at Stockport Breakfast Club, one of the regular networking events run by Manchester Chamber. This post has some links to further information for people who listened to me today.

Social Media for Small Business

This page will be read by people who weren’t at the event, but like the attendees are mostly in small businesses. For them, their main concern is whether they have time to use social media. My answer to the self-posed question in my presentation’s title of “Should I Be Tweeting?” was

“Very probably, but only you can decide how to use social media in your own business life.”

That sounds a bit half-hearted, but social media is relatively new, and while companies and individuals continue to come up with new and interesting ways of using it, you can’t really afford to be out of the loop.

Here are the highlights from my presentation:

I regard LinkedIn as an essential part of my business life, and Twitter as a useful addition. I’ve put together some links to information on both of those tools that you should find helpful.

Before you get a LinkedIn account (which is free), try reading the introductory information in LinkedIn’s Learning Center.

There are people who offer training on using LinkedIn, but I’ve not experienced it, so can’t say how worthwhile it is. There’s a wealth of good information online.

You’ll only find out how to make LinkedIn work for you by using it, and looking at other people to see how they use it. You’ll soon discern what you think is good practice.

There are many individuals offering advice on how to get the most out of LinkedIn. These three will get you started:

• Guy Kawasaki: 10 Ways To Use LinkedIn
• Ian Brodie: 10 Linkedin Tips for Professionals (and a tribute to Sir Bobby Robson)
• Will Kintish (on Manchester Chamber’s blog): Top 10 Tips for getting to grips with LinkedIn

Of course, Google is your friend when you want to find more information like this.

You’ll see that groups on LinkedIn can be very useful in enhancing your network. You should join the LinkedIn group for Stockport Breakfast Club, and be an active member.

Start with this video, or read the FAQ page on Twitter’s site.

There’s a good overview slide show in my previous post Twitter – What’s All The Fuss About?.

Advice from local people:

• Chameleon PR: Twitter Guide (PDF file)
• Juice Digital: How to be Twittering within the hour

As with LinkedIn, watching how other people use Twitter will soon help you to decide what you think is good practice for your use of Twitter.

Again, Google will give you links to lots of suggestions for how to use Twitter. This Google search just pulls up pages from the last year. You want to read recent stuff on this because usage of Twitter is developing rapidly.

Once you get a Twitter account and start tweeting, you’ll find that the Twitter site itself is not much good for reading tweets and reacting to them. My favourite tools are:

• Tweetdeck – Best desktop Twitter client so far. Allows you to set up searches and groups so you can focus on topics and people of particular interest.
• Dabr – Works on mobile phones that have an HTML browser.
• Feedly Mini – An add-in for Firefox that makes it easy to tweet a web page that you think people will find interesting. It’s part of  Feedly, which is the best RSS reader I’ve found, and something I highly recommend you use.

Inspiration

Lastly, here’s some inspiration for you. This is the first of two videos by Ramon De Leon, a partner in a six-outlet Dominos pizza franchise in Chicago. The fact that I even know about a Dominos pizza franchisee in Chicago tells you a lot about the power of social media. Listen to how he makes creative use of social media to sell more pizza.

Part 2 is here. Watch right to the end – the host makes a very important point about branding.

You can follow Ramon on Twitter. If he uses the web to sell more pizza, maybe there’s a way you could be using it in your business too.

Connect With Me

If I can help you with any of this stuff, please let me know. Leave a comment below. You can of course…

Follow me on Twitter, or
Connect with me on LinkedIn