Alison van Diggelen interviewed Guy Kawasaki at the UCSC extension in Santa Clara last night (Video of Guy Kawasaki’s interview). Guy is a wonderful speaker! Every time I hear Guy speak, I know why he was such a successful evangelist for the Apple Macintosh that Apple made him a “fellow”. Guy modestly attributes his success to two things: having a great product and being willing to “grind it out”. However, Guy’s true gift is his ability to convince you to follow his logic to his conclusion.
Guy says that in order to be relevant today you need to be using Social Media and Twitter. Here is where Guy got the audience to suspend disbelief, by equating Social Media to Twitter.
Then Guy stated Twitter is a platform. There is no right or wrong way to use Twitter. What Guy said is absolutely true. He is such a powerful evangelist that the audience was misdirected evaluating these 2 statements relative to Twitter versus his previous statement. The real questions one needs to ask are:
- Is Social Media more than Twitter?
- Why use Twitter for my business, if I don’t have a plan?
Guy has a plan for Twitter. Guy’s plan fits perfectly with his business model for Alltop.
“The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you” …in real-time.
Twitter is real time. Guy likens Twitter to CNN and says you have to tweet each tweet 4 times to be heard by your followers, like CNN repeats the news over and over and over again.
What is your business model? Is your business model like CNN? Would repeating each tweet 4 times a day keep your customers away?
If your business model is different than CNN, you need to develop a different approach to Social Networking. Social Media is not one size fits all. Social Media is not just about Twitter. Social Media provides you and your company with a much richer opportunity to build your presence and leadership brand in a much bolder way than any other time previously and less expensively too.
Social Media is here to stay, like the Internet. You need to identify your key goals and significant audiences (customers and potential customers). Then you and your company are ready to start GEAR-ing Up your Social Media plan. It is time to build a plan and start implementing by thinking differently than you have in the past and being more creative than you’ve ever thought your firm could be. This plan may or may not include Twitter.
. It felt like a Friday night beer bash at a start-up with an on-going demo of Wildfire’s web 2.0 products. You could casually move from Socializing to product demo and back to Socializing – very cool! BTW -Wildfire’s products promote companies on social media through contests, sweepstakes, and coupons.