2009 saw me as an absolute Twitter evangelist - really enjoying the interaction, connectivity and wealth of useful and useless but interesting info that was out there. The last few months have seen a change in my professional and personal views (i don't pretend here to be giving an industry view - its just my personal feelings and how i use it.)
Professional - why i love it
1. I have a network of people who are not friends(a few are) but people i know and the info we share can be really useful and impossible to get without scouring sites and conducting arduous email conversations.
2. I think its going to be the big thing in recruitment communications - i just know it will (is) work really well - and create a genuine conversation between employer/recruiter without the pitfalls of a site like Facebook
3. We are seeing really nice experimentation - trial and error - low cost pilots. That shows nobody has got it 100% right yet but there will be a good set of data to make some improvements next quarter
4. It really does cost almost nothing - but does require application and thought - the best sort of combination. These digital new things that cost a lot and deliver little are very passe in 2010.
Personal - why i don't love it
1. The chatter has become rather tiresome - the "journey into work" problems interest very few
2. Clearly everyone i follow has a more interesting life than me - their saturday night consists of theatre/abseiling/art galleries/truffle hunting - mine consists of being too tired to switch over from All Star Mr and Mrs
3. Their relationships are great too and their children perfect....(just like mine, he says quickly)
In summary - the personal stuff is all a little self publicist oriented (and yes i know this as i am self publicist extraordinaire)
But the professional side is going to be fascinating and brilliant
Anyway - have to go as need to book my table at The Ivy on saturday night with Brangelina, Michael Jackson and Elvis.
3 comments:
To me Twitter is a business tool (but even business people have the odd comment to make about their day or what they are up to. I try and avoid too much trivia, but for instance I'm reading 'Greavsie' at the moment and it's a great book for anyone who wants to remember when football was untainted by big money and lack of loyalty)
Back to the business side though, in October when I joined I had no followera and no idea. Prior to joining I wrote it off as a place where, as you say, too many people talk purely about their journey to work etc. Clearly that's not the case though. yes, we all indulge in the kind of personal detail that's not of much interest to the world at large from time to time (my story about headbutting a toilet seat the other night for instance) but as long as we choose to make it an exception rather than a rule surely it's of no real consequence?
The secret to me is learning how to use Twitter to one's advantage and this I am slowly but surely doing through the advent of a blog, regular tweets about what I do, and what I can offer recruiters, as well as offering opinion on a variety of other people's blogs and business related articles.
As a result, I now have a humble but appreciated 350+ followers who in turn tend to RT my stuff which then puts it in front of an even larger audience. I've picked up two projects, one of which I would certainly never have got without Twitter, and I also have a few irons in the fire.
In short, if I banged on about my screaming 16 month old (that's what I can hear at the moment) and what I was having for tea it would bore me witless too, but I think my followers accept that sort of reportage in small doses so long as I have something useful to say on matters recruitment as well. I even got a mention on Bill Boorman's Radio Show today!
Alastair
You are being a tad oversensitive - i think its a great business networking tool - and i enjoy that through Twitter you and i have re-connected after at least 10 years - your toilet headbutt story is perfect Twitter fodder and there is nothing wrong with promoting yourself via the medium (i certainly do!)-
The fact that the personal stuff of i am in bar, on a tube etc - probably does not ring my bell says more about my grumpy self (or that side of me) than my fellow Twitterers. A Twitter accout or blog or forum - to be successful has to have personality and for a lot of us that means injections of humour and opinion and ideally quite controversial stuff.
Anyway - hope you are well and carry on as i certainly enjoy it!
It's a grumpy side I have too then because I don't like too much information of the 'in bar, on train' variety either. In fact I have a few followers who are acquaintances from other arenas who I feel obliged to follow out of courtesy, but who just post inane and boring stuff about their lives and nothing else.
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