This information was more than I could handle. I was not prepared for what was being said. My reason for attending was to learn the basics of twitter and build confidence. Ok, my expectations and reality were worlds apart and it took me a while to get over it.
There is so much more to twitter than answering the question: ”What are your doing” which has recently been changed to “What’s happening”. If you plan to incorporate twitter in your business and want your followers to read your tweets because you have something to say that is important to them, you really have to know more than I wanted to know. That’s a fact and it takes many hours of research on your own to get there. Or does it?
I still believe that a group can gather, start with the basics, become familiar with terms and build confidence within a group workshop. I am confident a beginner group workshop will result in saving lots of time and research for all. To date one does not exist. The knowledge you need is online in twitter manuals and YouTube videos but time management is the problem for most of us.
With full-time jobs – whatever field – how do you “get up to speed”, as Joe Spake says, before you jump in and test the water. I don’t think we have the luxury of testing the waters in business. Our reputation is too important to make mistakes or tweet something that draws a lot of negative comments to our business. Worse yet, our message might be ignored totally and we won’t be able to figure out why. We need to know the whys first so we can target, be effective and manage our time.
If you have the money, you can hire a consulting firm to do all this for you. Some of my business associates have this budget. Most do not. Small businesses, start-ups and sole proprietors along with mid-level corporate employees and managers – even upper-level management and owners of large firms – need a fast track to get them started. Hands on participation to get there is essential. The need for this is simply because of the urgency to get the information then quickly become productive without hours and hours of research or trial and error.
My goal is to stop everything, read the user manuals, find the answers and then share them in a logical, step by step manner that will bring a group up to speed all at the same time. Learn together, build together and grow together is on my blog banner. This is the example I need to follow.
If you are advanced and want to know about searching twitter, management applications like TweetDeck and Seesmic or search statical data from TweetGrid, Klout and TweetBeep, (this was just the first quarter of the outline!) Social Web Learning has a training class that will blow you away. There is so much information in the outline that Joe couldn’t get through it in two hours. We will be extending it to four hours next time. Fabulous outline for experienced users who want to take their twitter experience to the next level. I was blown away. He lost me in the first half hour. I was in over my head and I hate it when that happens.
I don’t want to feel that uninformed ever again. I pledge to do my research, read the manuals and outline a group workshop that beginners can enjoy. If you think this is a good idea, thank Joe Spake for showing me the way and forcing me to do my homework. I’m hoping it will benefit many and that Joe will agree to teach those of us who are at my level. I know he will – he always agrees to help anyone who wants to learn about social media. We just have to tell him what we need.
There will be a new descriptive name for the existing, advanced course and it will be scheduled again soon for those who are at that level. Email or comment if you want to be notified for this “blow you away” session. Beginners – hold on, your class is coming.
