Journal
To Be Charming, Fascinating and Enchanting on Twitter
by Jen Pennington
Today I attended a Webinar by Guy Kawasaki on WebEx, entitled, Get “Social” with Guy Kawasaki, his secrets plus live Q&A. Mr Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine, a previous Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. and author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.
Mr. Kawasaki’s talk today demonstrated how he uses Twitter as a marketing weapon. He wisked back and forth showing examples of how he sets his tweets up to repeat every so often during the day, while searching for new content, garnering new followers, and really how to get the most out of Twitter. He actually offered up some great stuff that got me rethinking Twitter and how I can serve my clients and my own business better.
One of the biggest takeaways both James and I got out of the event was his language around getting people to notice you. He spoke eloquently about how it’s easy to be charming, fascinating and enchanting if you are a big celebrity, but much harder to do when you are not.
Those three words got to me. In a world full of technology it’s so easy to lose grace and flounder into the depths of trying to sell services or products to an unknown world. But I like those three words and they connote what seems to be lacking in our technology driven lives. Oh we try to be clever and playful on our facebook pages, and a little more professional on our LinkedIn sites, but the real question is, how do we engage people in a longer conversation or a longer look at our products or services?
I imagine the use of Twitter this way. There’s a dinner party being held. Different companies are represented at the table. Many times when we speak about branding we talk about the personality of a company. For now I’ll use Monopoly game pieces of the Shoe, the Wheelbarrow, the Dog, and the Top Hat to represent the different companies. The Shoe seems quiet and reserved, while the Dog and the Top Hat bounce around from topic to topic, making pleasant conversation and capturing the attention of others in the room. This is charming, fascinating and enchanting in action. In the immediate world of Twitter are we always trying to be the life of the party so people recognize us, and follow us. The Wheelbarrow becomes a follower and soon the Shoe joins in. The Shoe however gets indignant about something the Top Hat has said or done and lambasts the Top Hat on his Twitter. The Top Hat now has two choices. He can either address the issues of the Wheelbarrow or simply “Block” him. By responding at first politely to the Wheelbarrow, he engages his adversary and may even make him a believer or regain his confidence. But if the Wheelbarrow insists on being indignant, it is probably not a customer the Top Hat wants to have anyway.
The point is this. With Twitter we engage at a dinner party level. We bring topics to the table that some may find interesting and we don’t get a chance to delve too deeply. We flit around within an area of interest or expertise, and people follow because there are mavens who are seen as great sources of information and we keep them on our “good” list. By being charming, fascinating and enchanting a company or person can be held in high esteem as a subject matter experts, and garner lots of good attention. I like to think that even Twitter can be used to show there are good conversationalists out there even in its most shorthanded form.
If you would like to learn more about Guy Kawasaki’s presentation on How to Use Twitter as a marketing weapon, start here.
2 Responses to “To Be Charming, Fascinating and Enchanting on Twitter”
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Good point about the depth of conversation in Twitter and other social media. Lots of chatter at the dinner table, with fleeting touches on important topics. And it takes time and focus to listen/sift through that volume of conversation. More degrees of complexity to living and working in the 21st century.
It’s also a gift to be charming, fascinating and enchanting on Twitter in 140 characters or less, although I’m a big believer in brevity!