If you’re going to talk the talk, you should walk the walk…

Isn’t it just strange how people can elevate themselves to a position of ‘expert’ simply by running a seminar and charging an entrance fee? For the second time in as many weeks I’ve received invitations to seminars about Twitter run by companies that are going to tell me all about how this amazing tool can revolutionise business, but do they use it? If they do, they’re very stealthy…

Twitter is a fantastic tool for getting your brand out their into the world. Because of the amazing number of people using it, the fact that you can say something and it is picked up by thousands of (hopefully!) interested people is an amazing thing to behold. Can it be used for business? Yes it can and it can bring you many many new customers but who you go to for advice?

Well, if you happen to be on one of the many mailing lists that the Chamber of Commerce have, you’ve probably had a number of invites lately from companies that will tell you all about it. They’re ready to impart all of their knowledge about this amazing networking tool and show you just how they’ve used it to boost the readership of their website and sell more stuff. The best thing is, if they are using it, it’s easy to check them out because Twitter has search and I can find these people, discover what they’re twittering about and maybe check out how many followers they’ve got.

Now, just to explain for those readers who are perhaps wondering what all this ‘follow’ stuff is about, if you check out a Twitter account, it will tell you how many people have decided to follow a particular person. The more followers they have, the more popular they are. That’s all, easy.

The average number of followers is apparently 140 ish but some people have thousands, many thousands so you’d expect the illustrious speaker at any event to have a huge list of followers that they can use as an example of how great this social networking lark is.

I’m not going to name names, but the first invite I got listed only a few Twitter accounts and the biggest following was 127. That’s not much. That’s not much at all. I checked out their tweets. It went along the lines of “Doing some marketing this morning ready for the big event” and “We’re marketing more on Twitter than ever before”. It was like some marketing phrase robot at the back of the office had just been prodded with a stick.

So when the second invite turned up I was excited and looking for even more information. The blurb said:

“Many businesses are already using it to good effect.”

How inspiring. That being the case, I should be able to click on the Twitter account of this particular business and check out their Tweets then, huh? See what they’ve been up to. Except their Twitter account isn’t mentioned anywhere on the advertising. Nowhere.

So, I searched for the company using Twitter. You know, this amazing social networking tool that you’re banging on about and telling me is so damn good. The one you’re going to teach me all about, the one that is getting you business because you use it all the time. Can I find them?

No.

What I do find after a lot more searching is some tweets from the company promoting the event. Twelve in total. It’s almost like the event was happening so “I’d better start using it”.

Dammit, why am I so angry? I’ll tell you, it’s because this is the blind leading the blind. Businesses in this recession are looking for help from their local chamber and so when they hand over their cash, they expect it to be good information borne from lots of experience, not just a cursory glance over ‘The Dummies Guide to the Web’.

Or maybe I’m angry because we didn’t do this last year. That’s it – I’m jealous.

Edited: It may seem the point of this post is that you’re only any good on Twitter if you have lots of followers. Although the number of followers a person has is an incredibly good barometer of how they use the technology, it’s not the only thing. Many extremely interesting people only have a few followers and they are effective in their marketing.

The real point is that if you blart on about a technology then you should use it. Carping on about Twitter and then not even mentioning your account is just crazy. It’s a bit like buying a website from a company that doesn’t have a website themselves. I mean, that would be absolutely stupid, wouldn’t it? Eh, Black Country Chamber? Wouldn’t that be absolutely the most crazy thing to do to buy a website from a company that didn’t have a website?

Eh?