Welcome Clubhouse folks from Connection Zone For Women Business Owners… and everyone! It may sound odd to start a post about Twitter for business with a shout out to people attending a Clubhouse Room. By, the way Clubhouse is the newest social media shiny object that is part of “Social Audio.” Think of it as a Huge conference with, what seems like zillions of breakout rooms of every topic imaginable. As the name implies it’s entirely audio a la podcasts. There are no visuals except your avatar or you can include emojis. Sooo… when my BBF Nancy Chorpenning, founder of CEO School For Women, ask if I would come on stage to present my Twitter story and how to use Twitter as a business tool, I couldn’t say ‘no’ to Nancy. However, my challenge was how to add value to a virtual talking-head chat. Thus this post which will link from Twitter and serve as a back-channel to Clubhouse. You can find me on Clubhouse – @tobydiva or search Toby Bloomberg. Note: Since there is no opportunity to include links or if you are shy and don’t want to ‘talk’ Twitter and Instagram are linked from your bio and serve as a back-channel. (which in totally honest I don’t get why Clubhouse would send people off-platform to network…. smarter minds than mine…). My Story My story in using Twitter for Business began May 2007 when I jumped on to, at that time the newest social media shiny toy. The Kool Kids, who were blogger friends from back in 2005 when I launched Diva Marketing, were there so I wanted to play too. @TobyDiva was a great opportunity to ‘text-talk’ within a supportive community. Quickly we realized the benefits for building relationships and how brands could benefit. In 2014, I launched a sister company to Bloomberg Marketing, Diva Foodies, that would focus on a long-time love and passion – the food world. I saw a gap in how small food makers, chefs, cookbook authors were missing marketing opportunities in digital and social media marketing. I knew I had the experience and skills to help them grown business. My challenges were although I had work within the culinary industry it was a relatively new niche and my contacts or community were limited at best. I needed to better understand what was...
Recently I was chatting with a prospective client who wanted to increase her social media presence. Not surprisingly she had a bunch of what I fondly refer to as “The Elephant in the Room” questions. Her most pressing concern was not trolls, money, technology or even ROI but T-I-M-E. Here’s a bit of how our chat went…. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “There is no getting around it, the social media channels, networks or whatever the preferred term is, are hungry beasts. It does take time to feed and care for them.” However, without non-sales focused, value-add content (and consistent engagement) you might as well stick to your website and email campaigns. Sure there are tools that will help you post to multiple channels at one swoop. While you might save a little time, you often have to create the posts to the lowest common character denominator. You loose the benefits unique to each channel. (Hearing big sighs… sorry) Pet Peeve. Unless you want your twitter feed filled with links, not especially great for visual industries like food or fashion or even B2B, do not link Twitter and Instagram directly. A Few Tools & Ideas So what’s a person who wants to step into social media but has limited time to do? There are interesting tools like Paper.li which curates content from the people you follow on Twitter into a cool quasi newsletter format. Often the most challenge part of content creation is What to create. Buzz Summo is a cool little search engine that pulls trending and hot topic information. Similar to Paper.li Feedly consolidates feeds but it pull from a wider source range including blogs, publications, blogs, YouTube and more. Social Sprout has a list of 180 resources – really! Re-purposed Content is one of my all time favorites. I love creating blog posts from social media discussions I’ve initiated especially on Twitter. It’s a great way to consolidate information, create a blog post from curated information which can then be socialized and positioned as original content. The added benefit is it’s a nice thank you to the people who participated in your conversation. Example – Recently a friend brought me some amazing smoked salt from Peru. I love to cook but I had not a clue what to do with this unique spice. So I reached out through my...
Mentoring. Men get it. Literally. Not as often do women. Literally. Recently I attended a networking event, Dream Girl Atlanta, where a panel of successful women shared their stories. During the Q&A a discussion occurred about mentoring. The consensus was mentoring was a valuable resource that can help grown a career. However, many women who would be wonderful mentors, shy away from the time commitment. Others who have not been...