Guy Kawasaki on social media

Yesterday, I attended a very interesting webinar on Twitter presented by Guy Kawasaki.

As an observation related to the style, I very much appreciated the very simple and accessible style of the presentation. Natural, with humour. I am following him on Twitter and often I was surprised by the quality of the articles and information tweeted.

Yesterday, I had the occasion to discover how to be able to put together all these information and to send it further. You could ask yourselves - as I did as well - what is the relevance of sending neutral links about photography, design, social media, travel etc.? It is not better to have your personal message and to create your own brand based on what you are?

Most probably, the last solution is possible too. I am trying to do my best to be as natural as possible, but I am convinced equally that for a big share of my followers, it is not pretty interesting. And, from a day to another the number of my followers is fluctuant, as probably many of them are not interested at all of getting too many links about topics they do not have any clue about - as about science, communities in the Middle East or future of the book (only to randomnly mention a couple of my areas of interest these days).

At the yesterday webinar, the discussion focused on the best use of Twitter for business purposes, Kawasaki considering this tool as a "marketing weapon", able to monitor your own products. But, as well, to engage communties, sell your goods and services and find the necessary support. In order to find out more, you have to use the "search" option for finding not what it is discussed now about your products and business interests, find professionals in the area. You could maintain high interest from the part of your followers providing them fresh information. StumbleUpon or Alltop - the examples he mentioned - could be used to match your interests and identitfy topics worthy to forward. Your tweets could be scheduled, made be part of a campaign developed on other media tools - as Facebook - or personalized via TweetHawk.

One of my conclusion is: it is not enough to be present on various social media tools, you have to know how to let other people notice your presence.

The impact of social media on businesses

The beginning of the conversation.

Stories about Twitter

Easy to use, not easy to make it proffesionally. There are lot of applications and small tricks making Twitter a valuable tool for marketing promotion. Even I am using this social media networking for a lot of time already, I am still far enough of the moment when I can be sure I know at least 80% about.

Time management

I am a fun of the social media from the very beginning: a Facebook account, a Twitter account, various professional networks. I tried to be a trend follower, but wanted to be among the first to see the whole evolution and the changes occurred. And there are tremendous changes, in only a couple of years, even months.

A big problem I encountered in the next month, as the 2.0 activity increased, as my professional interests as well: I need a tremendous amount of time to check, read, select, use and send further an impressive amount of information. Take for example Twitter, where the number of the persons I follow is more than 200: in 5 minutes, at 11-12 o'clock, I receive around 21 updates. Most part of the updates, are related to relevant domains: social design, writing, various political and social activities, academic information. I do speed reading, but still I need time. And perseverance to switch from a news to another, while keeping my offline schedule - including long hours of meetings, business lunches etc. When I am back, the flow of information is entering my world from all directions, so I usually need more than one hour for processing the information.

It is addictive and cutting serious chances to maintain your normal real life interaction. But, in a lot of cases, the information provided via various channels offered me tremendous help in finding new business and academic opportunities and improving my knowledge in various domains.

What to do with my time, though?

For at least two weeks I implemented a very careful system of periods dedicated to this online activities: chat, finding new opportunities, reading and forwarding articles, registering for webinars. When I am very busy during the day, I prefer to perform these operations three time the day, for 40 minutes: early in the morning, while sipping my coffee; during the lunch break; late in the evening. In between, I am trying to catch some time too for writing for various classes and book projects plus blogging - at least two hours the day - and reading - various documentations.

And, of course, at least once the week I take the freedom to refuse to stay too much connected, but going out to look for proper human inspiration.

Time management is everything, but life is everywhere.

Writing for businesses

could be more than a monotonous boring show-up of words. Good to know, good to think about this. And, I faced this situation in many cases as needed to convince my clients that trying to have open messages and interesting messages do not diminish at all the level of seriosity and the sober image of the company. Sometimes I won, sometimes not.

10 questions

for a startup or a new kind of business-therapy.

On the publishing market

The publishing marketing is becoming more and more creative and imaginative. Very well connected and fully using the tools of 2.0. While continuing to rely on the gifts of good wording and the creativity.

In fact, it is a hard task for the writers used with the classical rhythm of life. You write your piece of story, after documentation and a little meditation about what do you want to say and how and then submit your contribution to a review, according to the deadline set.

The last day I went through a different experience, as I found, thanks to a friend, the call for submissions posted by 48 Hour Magazine. First, I impatiently waited the announcement of the subject. Checking the Twitter account, trying to figure out what the main topic will be while watching some videos posted on the website. The whole process of submission, editing and sending to print is taking 48 hour. From time to time, the editors aired live webcams with the atmosphere from the editing desk, suggestive videos about what the work is going on, announcement about what to do - and not, messages about the level of interests. All you have to do is to be creative, a very organised mind and perseverent in sharing your ideas.

Even I do not have any idea about the chances to succeed in getting published, this latest writing experience was extremely interesting and challenging for me. And made me think about what I want to write and how. And, not less important, the feeling of being happy to be part of this new world of creative publishers.