Top 10 Twitter Tips welcomed at 4Networking Clevedon
The Morgan PR Twitter Tour on 4Networking took as way out West this morning as we left Newbury far behind to present our top tips at 4Networking Clevedon, near Bristol.
There was a wonderfully warm welcome and it was something of a reunion with three out of four of The Travelling 4Burys – only Ken Abbott, was missing, but it was great to catch up with Chris Cherrill, Olly Culverhouse and the infamous Kim Hambley.
It was a terrifically busy meeting – there were 22 people crammed into Scartletts, on the sea front at Clevedon and as I discovered area leader Kim had not been joking when he said some had come especially to hear the my talk on Twitter and the Top 10 Tips for Twitter Newbies.
Spirits were high in a room which seemed to have almost as many pop up banners as there were 4Networkers . There was some discussion over the collective noun for a group of pop up banners... I reckon it should be a sway of pop ups? What do you think? Any suggestions?
I digress, the 40 second round kicked off over a hearty full English (with the largest sausages yet seen on my Twitter Tour of 4Networking groups!) and in next to no time I was up front with Twitter.
There were already a refreshing number of people in the room who were already on Twitter, some with significant followings, but it seemed everyone took something from the tips, which included urging people to use Tweetdeck or an equivalent to manage their accounts and SocialOomph to keep their business sanity by scheduling tweets (shock horror, professional Twitters are rarely glued to their computers!).
Considering that the 4Sight Slot is an insight rather than a sales pitch I responded to a gift of a question about learning the details by saying I would not mention our forthcoming Twitter Workshop in Newbury on 12 October! There was lots of interest for something I didn’t mention!
The questions are always telling and there were some enthusiastic ones which had Kim checking his watch and me promising to stay after the event. These allow you to expand and I was able to give the audience a glimpse of how Twitter is just part of the ‘Organic PR’ mix that allows you to simply leverage what you do through multiple channels – like blogging!
Now 4Networking veterans and regular readers will be familiar with the three one-to-one meetings with member and I was in great demand! I think heckling Kim and kicking off the 40 seconds had helped! All three of mine had gone before the official start of booking those meetings!
First I met with an enthusiastic independent financial advisor and Iain McCulloch who had grasped the potential of not just Twitter, but the whole of social media to reach an evolving web savvy demographic. A background in the IT solutions to financial advice before becoming an independent financial advisor had given him an insight; his clients can opt to access their portfolio details through a clever dashboard that adjusts according to their needs and preferred level of risk.
Next I spent 10 minutes with one of those 4Burys! Chris Cherrill is a talented designer and it was great to hear how he is landing some significant clients through purely organic growth with his business Open Doors Design. He too was keen to understand how he could leverage his current successes to attract more business and had correctly surmised that a combination of public relations and social media could make all the difference. I was delighted to be able to give him some thoughts of how to move forward.
Finally I met with Phil Clarkson, from Interactive Training Solutions, who had subscribed to the commonest concern of any business professional faced with the relentless march of social media: how long is it going to take? It was good to be able to reassure him of how the tools are developing alongside social media to leverage the time you spend. What was most interesting about Phil’s approach to training is how it shuns the dependency that so many trainers have on using IT, when any training should be designed to suit the objective of the course and those needing to learn.
Incidentally, I was asked today if blogging truly helps promote Morgan PR. Well obviously it does, but proof has neatly come from Google! Yesterday I was at 4N Slough and have already blogged about that. Just search Google for 4Networkng Slough and see where the blog post appears! No doubt searching for 4Networking Clevedon will reveal this post near the top soon after publication too!