My notes and commentary on “Twitter Basics and Beyond” at #IMSTL

Written on December 10, 2009 by Chris Miller in Conferences
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I am sitting in the session hosted by Mark Murnahan, author of Twitter for Business – Twitter for Friends, to get his take on how businesses can use Twitter to spread reach and increase their audience.

Benefits of Twitter:

  • building relationships
  • networking and referrals – it is not about direct sales all the time, but using influence and influencers to promote your product
  • brand awareness
  • market research – using search.twitter.com and saved searches.
  • integration

Downsides of Twitter:

  • fear of unknown
  • time
  • ROI tracking

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My commentary – This was designed as a beginner session for businesses to enter into the Twitter foray and understand how to best begin using it.  It hit the point on that but then he used bullets for creating a Twitter account where some live demo information would have gone so far with the crowd.

As expected, attendees asked about what client to use and ROI or any kind of tracking.  This is incredibly hard unless you build links that have this type of service attached.

He was fast moving with good stories relating the slides to engage the audience, but a heard grumblings around me when he had a whole slide on his book for sale instead of listing it as a resource.

It seems that the PR people at these larger companies are still pondering how best to implement and which path to choose.  A decent flow for an hour, I am checking for the slides to be online.

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  • I wish I had more time to prepare. I think I mostly understood what you meant. I had hoped to have an opportunity to create somewhat of a walk through. Time was pretty limited leading up to the event.

    A point I mostly wanted to drive home was that people should take a closer look at Twitter, why it is so relevant, and that the connection with people is the greatest value.

    I am more of a geek marketer than a salesman ... can you tell? :-)
  • Thank you.

    I will try to get the slides added and some video available soon. I had very little time to prepare and was still working to put the slides and talk together at 4:30 the morning of the event. I had just driven in from Topeka and think I had enough coffee to kill some people. :-)

    I spent a lot of time writing the book, so to say that it is available for sale seems pretty natural to me. Then again, I understand some people do not believe in paying for useful information. I wrote it because people kept asking me about Twitter and my thoughts of it. I wrote it to be helpful far more than to make money. I would certainly never scam somebody out of $12.95 for the couple dollars royalty I would earn off the sale. My reputation is worth a lot more than that to me. I would be more inclined to simply give it away for free if I really believed it would not diminish its greater potential by altering the perceived value.
  • IdoNotes
    Oh I think you misunderstood! The content was good, yes a video would have helped or a live walkthrough. Their only comment (a small group that was together) on the book was the whole large slide instead of a slide with resources and your book as the top one would have seemed not as intrusive. Basically saying here is the best resource, me, andhere is some fre stuff to browse but since I am on top it is the best content. That kind of idea. Glad you found the posting however!
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