Is Twitter a Driver or Receiver Stream?
Posted on 29 December 2009
People can be forgiven to push one activity into lots of different channels eg Facebook and Linkedin to name two. After all, it’s only for a very few that marketing is a full time occupation.
But, is Twitter the driver for all applications?
I say No. For the simple reason that Twitter has its own vocabulary and, even though there are millions of users, not everyone will be familiar with it. You could be reducing your impact by continuing to use it. To quote Lee Iocacca, “Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they’ll say, ‘God, he said exactly what I was thinking. And when they begin to respect you, they’ll follow you to the death.”
And this is really what you want from your social media activity. You want a loyal tribe; a tribe that consumes your products and services. You certainly don’t want to be expending effort on creating tribes on the different platforms to find that people hide you because of your constant twittering.
If Twitter is a receiver stream, what are the driver streams?
And, these are ever changing and certainly will change in how people rank their usefulness to them. For all the sites where you are able to create material whether that’s a status update, a blog post, new video or podcast, these are the driver streams. And, it is from these streams that you turn on the link to Twitter but not in reverse!
The upshot is that people will be consuming your material in an ‘original’ form and in a way they understand.
You are then able to decide how much more you want to do on Twitter in terms of original postings. But then it’s the community aspect to participate in and that doesn’t need to be broadcast around the internet. As Lee Iococca says, “and, when they begin to respect you, they’ll follow you to death”
Let me know whether this struck a chord with you. Do you have your twitter posts streaming into lots of different sites? How has that worked for you?
5 responses to Is Twitter a Driver or Receiver Stream?
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Thank you for this information. I hope I am correct to understand what you are suggesting-that I mention my Twitter account in my blog, FB, Linkedin and my web sites.
However, I still don’t see how Twitter could help my business. Can you explain this further?
Hi Jackie
I am suggesting you set up your blog, facebook, Linkedin, Youtube etc to feed into your twitter account and NOT the other way around.
Twitter is another social networking tool that gives you access like never before to people who are influential in your market. You can connect with journalists, potential suppliers, prospects. You can search for people who are local to you through twitter local. These people may or may not be part of your other networks but it’s a way of expeanding your network, conversation and influence. By offering value and combining promotions with content, you will grow your list gaining new customers along the way.
If you haven’t already, please check out the How to do business with Twitter report now in its third edition
Hi Karen- thank for a great post. Succinctly put. I have my Twitter stream running through my blog and nowhere else simply as you say it can be a foreign language to many and Tweets out of context can look quite inane to the uneducated!
Happy New Year
Dorothy
Well Done. I am glad. Even being able to understand the twitter-ese, it seems inappropriate out of its natural environment. I had a Linkedin discussion, which prompted this post, when Twitter became available in Linkedin
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