Making It Up

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Mixing business and pleasure while keeping it real.

—

by

Jax Blunt
in

Starting a business twitter account has been quite an eye opener. I never actually tried to build a network on twitter, it frequently surprises me how many people are signed up to listen to my ramblings. So having to go out there and be interesting on purpose bewilders me slightly.

I know what I like, and what I don’t like. I’m quite shallow, I’ll put up with a lot for a giveaway 😉 but I don’t fill my stream with RT competitions any more, I got bored of that. I also won’t just broadcast links, and I really dislike triberr, as I’ve written before. Although I can see a way it could be useful to a business.

And therein lies the rub. There are people doing business twitter in ways that make me want to weep. Auto DMs that are basically txtspk spam. Streams that are nothing but adverts, with no engagement at all. And yet the people doing this sort of thing have got thousands and thousands of followers. I don’t understand, why are people putting up with it?

Should I be doing business twitter like that? I really don’t want to. I want business me to be real me with maybe fewer nappy tweets. Or less talk of disastrous cooking incidents. Maybe a higher proportion of business type recommendations, of relevant articles. Probably less politics. I don’t want to put people off buying websites from us with too much mention of home education.

And yet, the people we’ve dealt with so far are people who’ve met me, baby in tow, and want to deal with that anyway. I wonder, is a separate twitter stream for the business necessary at all?

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Comments

8 responses to “Mixing business and pleasure while keeping it real.”

  1. Mark Ure avatar
    Mark Ure

    I’ve really racked my brains trying to understand what the point of Twitter is. My impression is that all that ever happens on it is that you tweet and it vanishes into the void. That could be worthwhile, but again it can be achieved by pen and paper. It has its virtues, to be sure – it encourages brevity for example. However, i can’t imagine what engagement would be there. I found it useful during the 2010 General Election campaign for coordinating because it was an easy way to broadcast texts to a group of people who needed to act together. It may be that my lifestyle just hasn’t got a niche for it. All i do with it nowadays is post links to my YouTube stuff because it’s said to be a good idea. I am also aware that i haven’t had a single view as a result of doing that.

    Reply
  2. Mark Ure avatar
    Mark Ure

    Oh, and also i have never responded to someone else’s Tweet or had a response to any of mine. Waste of time.

    Reply
    1. Jax avatar
      Jax

      Well, Mark, our business has three clients this week. All of them I met one way or the other via twitter or via other relationships build via twitter. So I’m a fan. I frequently respond to tweets and have discussions there, though I’m finding it far more difficult to build up that type of conversation at the business account, where people do seem to want to just broadcast.
      Alongside clients, I receive frequent perks from social metric companies who consider me a social influencer. That is also down to my tweeting and networking. The only way to make it work in my experience is to engage. If you aren’t doing that, you probably will find it a waste of time.

      Reply
  3. Midlife Singlemum avatar
    Midlife Singlemum

    I’m no marketing mavin but why isn’t there a big advert for your website business on this blog where you have many hits/day?

    Reply
    1. Jax avatar
      Jax

      Mainly because we haven’t settled on a banner colour. But you’re right, it needs doing.

      Reply
      1. Jax avatar
        Jax

        Done.

        Reply
  4. Anya from Older Single Mum avatar
    Anya from Older Single Mum

    People still like to deal with people. I don’t see why you need a separate business tweet account because the people you are already engaging are your market!

    Reply
    1. Jax avatar
      Jax

      We want to broaden that market and get into supporting businesses who aren’t necessarily interested in day to day life with four children 😉 Although there is much more crossover than I had expected.
      I am seriously considering the best way to do it. I just don’t want to feel that I have to limit what I saw on my own account because I might put off business leads. :/

      Reply

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