Twitter Guidelines for Work

This past week I had the pleasure of attending the first Social Media Breakfast Raleigh. The early discussion was about the use of Twitter for business.

Angela Conner, one of the organizers - thank you Angela - has posted some of this discussion on her blog . Angela had continued the discussion on Twitter as the week went on. The blog posting shows both sides of the issue.

Here is more on my thinking. For me, Twitter, email, IM, phones, snail mail, Fed Ex, texting, and talking are all about communications from one person to one or more other people. I think human nature causes us to over think things when they are new. Either that or, as in the cereal commercial, we let Mikey try it first. This is very natural.

The problem with technology is that late adopters probably go through the cautionary steps more slowly. On top of that they start later - hence the name "late adopters".

I know only a year ago I was at a meeting of about two dozen insurance companies and I listened awestruck as they all agreed that "this Internet thing" really wasn't very important to them yet. They thought it might be a the next 5 years or so.

So what should you do?

Take delight in your competitors who don't think this is an important tool. You are getting ready to lap them several times.

Realize this is not something new. I assume you have been communicating with your customers since you got your first customer. New technology does not equal new functions. It only equals new, more and better ways to perform existing, basic functions.