twitter posts

All a Twitter – This Means Business!

November 03rd, 2009

I started using Twitter about 5 months ago (follow me: @reneevations). I was hesitant when I started using it. A lot of people judge Twitter as a vehicle to post the virtues of the bran muffin they ate for breakfast. BUT, if used to leverage business, Twitter has some fantastic tools.  You can get the message out about the company and measure the effectiveness of the messages instantly using the resources of http://bit.ly.

Along with 15,743 registered attendees, I recently attended IIDEX/NeoCon Canada, Canada’s largest exposition and conference for the design, construction and management of the built environment. DesignerPages.com masterminded a very successful twitter campaign that generated over 2,400 tweets from attendees, exhibitors and students onsite and across the blogosphere with the tag #IIDEX09 . I actively tweeted about the show for two days.

I attended  a seminar by Anthony Watanabe – The Sustainability Studio. Anthony presented  how he had created an environmentally friendly office in an old building for his business. He created a panel of speakers for his 2 hour seminar. Each speaker presented their contribution to the project; ie: the designers and carpet manufacturer. It was a fantastic session; jam-packed with detailed information.

I sat in the session online with my laptop. As the presentation unfolded; I created a number of tweets about the session content. Imagine this; here I was in one small session room  with 35 people, but by tweeting I was syndicating the content to a larger audience. The audience was my twitter followers as well as, the #IIDEX09 followers. I listened to the panelists and tweeted fifty 140 character notes about what I found interesting.

Here are a few of the tweets:

Sustainability Studio F02 #IIDEX09 Innovation = Opportunity + Responsibility – a different twist on ROI. Is your business considering this??

Sustainability Studio F02 #IIDEX09 Companies need to find a fit for their strategic values: Innovation = Opportunity + Responsibility

Sustainability Studio F02 #IIDEX09 HOK reduce carbon footprint 50% by 2010, 50% studio are LEED APs, book Leigh Stringer ‘Green Workplace’

Sustainability Studio F02 #IIDEX09 HOK http://www.hok.com. Everytime you design you are branding something http://bit.ly/38SZ2S

Sustainability Studio F02 #IIDEX09 Interface Floor CEO Ray Anderson http://bit.ly/3NmNvoless “The Ecology of Commerce”

Sustainability Studio F02 #IIDEX09 – Eliminate waste, renew energy, employee engagement, redesign http://bit.ly/3NmNvoless

Here’s what I did:

1. I googled the presenters name to find their websites,
2. I copied the url into my bit.ly page to create a shortened url,
3. I then put the bit.ly it into my tweets (along with the #IIDEX09 tag)
4. I went back to bit.ly, refreshed my page to measure the number of hits that my tweets created on the presenters individual websites.

See an example of the bit.ly stats for my tweets – note the number of clicks I created from each tweet.

How to Measure Twitter Results Instantly.

Within 2 hours, with the use of twitter – I personally created a number of hits on 5 different websites, I syndicated the content of the seminar to a wider audience and with bit.ly I was able to measure my results instantaneously! That’s only one small example of the power of twitter.

If you have a business – get yourself past those bran muffin judgements to embrace the possibilities of this incredible tool. Get your message and help others leverage their message with twitter and twitter tools.

If you want to learn more about the Sustainability Studio – sign up for Anthony’s webinar on November 18th 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST.

If you are a twitter enthusiast – please retweet this blog using #IIDEX09 and http://bit.ly/2UbkFi.

Twitter does wonders for business

October 27th, 2009

If you are:

• a CEO wanting to increase buy-in and commitment to the strategic objectives and the success of your company,
• a COO who wants to create momentum within teams to get better results,
• a VP of human resources wanting to increase employee engagement.

Twitter could be your solution.

Twitter offers every company the opportunity to open up its public self, increase external perception of your brand, announce successes and expand customer reach. It can also be used to create internal buy-in,  build team momentum and increase employee engagement.

(If you don’t see a video below, view it here.)

(Learn more about the Johari feedback matrix.)

Like ourselves, businesses have personalities. The Feedback Self Disclosure Matrix explores the four selves.

1. The Public Self: What you and others know about your company, e.g. your brand,
2. The Private Self: What you know about your company but others don’t, e.g. your financials,
3. The Blind Self: What you are not aware of but others see clearly, e.g. a leadership team may not realize in an effort to get results they are actually developing a burn-out culture,
4. The Unknown Self: The hidden potential of every company. For example, during a strategic planning meeting, a team considers a disruptive innovation. Another example: Identifying a new area for the business where the team is willing to take a risk on something new, e.g. using the power of Twitter!

Twitter gives you an opportunity to start to consider strategically how you might open the public self of your organization. Download the Johari Feedback-Self Disclosure Matrix (PDF)

As a Start:
Have a conversation with your employees about what they might tweet – good news about the company, interesting facts about what’s going on, what goals they are reaching, what successes they are having. Include a conversation about company privacy — the Private Self — e.g. no need to tweet the financial status of the company.

Embrace the idea that Twitter can get the message out there to a larger audience as well as increasing internal buy-in to strategic objectives, creating momentum, and improving employee engagement.

What strategies do you have around Twitter?