I was approached a while ago about teaching Twitter to anyone who really wanted it. The organisation wanted to target beginners and that was fine by me. No one signed up. No skin off my nose to be honest. Then pondering it yesterday evening and today, there was no real need for it in the first place.
What does it really take to introduce someone to Twitter? Not a lot, that's what.
- Go to www.twitter.com
- Click on "Join Up"
- Create an account
- Type something in that big box at the top.
Congratulations, you are now on Twitter.... You'll eventually get the hang of all the retweets, replies and direct messages in very little time. If you desperate to find your friends and follow them there's even a link called "find people" that will do some searching for you.
Do I need to pay a company to tell me all this? No I don't. Nor does the rest of the population.
More to the point if you are a business
Facebook is just the same....
- Go to www.facebook.com
- Click Join Now
- Go through the process
- Wait for the email and then activate your account.
- Find your friends and start telling them stuff.
Easy.
Even using the for business there's not much to hinder your progress with a few hours will invested work, just see how everyone else is doing it. If you feel the need to go and either buy a book or sign up for a hugely expensive course to explain the above then that's fine. Go ahead and have a nice day, you're basically paying for lunch and the venue. What the course providers often don't tell you is the case for NOT signing the company up to Twitter or Facebook so you become the easy information prey of your competitors.
If you want to ask me questions on Twitter/Facebook then fire away, I don't mind answering for free. It only takes a few moments of my time, or collar me at an Open Coffee Coleraine meeting or something. But this coughing up of £200+ quid just to be taught what someone spent an hour looking up on the net.... pull the other one.
4 comments:
Agree somewhat but not entirely. I think with Twitter being used in so many ways, some people are getting alot out of beyond actually learning how to use it at the basic level.
What about things like, strategies for engaging your audience, building relationships etc? Thats all valuable and useful information. Im not saying it justifies the cost of an expensive seminar, but its not something that Twitter is going to explain in its business guide.
Jason. Totally agree. " If you need Twitter and FB spoonfeeding then you shouldn't be let play on the interwebs"
Must be a day for shooting from the hip :)
Agree, telling the user the 'right' way to use an app should be banned outright - it's for the user alone to decide how they use their tools.
And this social media strategy/relationship management stuff just smacks of marketing consultants rebranding themselves for the web.
Not that there's anything wrong with that in itself, but it does mean it's largely old hat.
Will admit this thought has crossed my mind many times recently.
So how did those who signed up for twitter et al get on without this 'training' in the first place?
There is though a section out there who will use it merely to spam, but they will surely learn that this aint the way when they suddenly lose all their followers, if they get any in the first place.
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