Why I Am Hooked Up. Reasons You Shouldn't Ignore Twitter.

LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter are not a passsing fad suitable for media, marketing, IT or recruitment professionals, as many sceptics judged at the begining. On contrary, more and more people and businesses realized the need to join and participate.  So why should YOU use twitter on top of your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles?

Beeing on twitter enables you to join a community of your choice, getting up to speed with news, and latest developments in the World, either from respected official channels –professional magazines, newspapers, business and political authorities, progressive Companies or from the tweeting community itself. Never before you could get so close to the gurus in their field, who’s  tweetstreams ideally consist of 80% professional and 20% private news, comments, evaluations, blogs.

You either create the content yourselves or you distribute (re-tweet) interesting news. Twitter is a great partnering and influencing tool. You can even steer an upheaval by tweeting, as Wael Ghonim did in Egypt (more in the blog post http://bit.ly/gU66z0) . The news travel fast and quick, the support can grow rapidly. 

One of the biggest hurdles at the beginning is to choose the relevant people and publishing houses, you want to follow. Your followers will recruit from those who are attracted to the similar topics. The easiest is to study the list of contacts somebody you admire follows and start to follow them as well. Only then you fully get hooked up with tweeting world, when you actively join in. Give this experience a week and you may be surprised about the value twitter brings you instantly.

The challenge of contributing is to learn to engage with your audience. Many celebrities are tweeting random quotes but never interact with the audience (is it really them who is tweeting?). The authenticity is lost and credibility as well. The line what ‘s hot in the world or in your chosen area gives you idea what similar minded people think about. Tweet words limit (140 letters) enables to focus your thoughts, also in direct e-mails, no time lost for the reader.

Twitter despite its growing registered accounts base of more than 200mil. worldwide, is still waiting for more widespread usage especially outside the United States (LinkedIn with 100mil. users WW, Facebook 643mil.WW). Language choice could be a challenge especially in countries with small English speaking base as they are limited to get to the WW twitter trending topics – except if they do not live in Egypt (voices in Egypt have special section).  Specific solutions were found for Germany, France and Italy, via @twitter_de (287t followers), @twitter_fr (388t followers), @twitter_it (312t followers).

If twitter is about speed and snapshot view, inviting you to get deeper in topics that interest you, and about learning and sharing with people you may not know personally, Facebook is mainly about updates exchange with your close family, friends and colleagues, as you have to (unlike in twitter) accept them in your network if you do not decide to go for the Company / Brand FB pages.

Professionally you cannot stay up to date without your LinkedIn account - for reputation building while nurturing your professional network and being connected with key people throughout your career evolvement.  

The more you interact with people on all three social media sites, the more thoughtful you are about your content, timing and target group relevance, the wider your reach will be and the stronger your personal/professional brand will become.


For inspiration about the power of Twitter check following sites:
@Zappos (1.8 mil. followers), @SouthwestAir (1.1 mil. followers), @CocaCola (0.236 mil. followers), @jack_welch (1.3 mil. followers), @tonyrobins (1.9 mil. followers), @mashable (2.2 mil. followers), @wired (0.8 mil. follwers), @tedtalks (0.37 mil. followers), @ThisIsSethsBlog (0.07 mil. followers).




Note: Twitter celebrated last Monday, March 21st its fifth birthday. From official Twitter Blog that day: "Twitter users now send more than 140 million Tweets a day which adds up to a billion Tweets every 8 days—by comparison, it took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the first billion Tweets. While it took about 18 months to sign up the first 500,000 accounts, we now see close to 500,000 accounts created every day. All of this momentum and growth often pales in comparison to a single compassionate Tweet by a caring person who wants to help someone in need."

What the King George V. In 1934 Understood Better Than Today´s Managers

It is not enough to be just on the wall in the framed picture.  Each leader, the King or the CEO, has to get closer to the crowds. He has to be like an actor, talking to the people, having „own voice“. Be that the nation or the Company, both need a leader they all could stand behind. They need a voice that unites them.

Seeing the Oskars´ winning film King´s Speech this week I was awakened to observe an interesting parallel. Early 30th the radio started to be widespread and the King understood its impact on the masses. Nowadays the social media play that role. But how many progressive managers use meaningful conversations around their brands and companies to link themselves to the hearts of people?

In the movie "King´s Speech" Prince Albert, The Duke of York (later the King George VI) heartbreakingly got beyond his weakness of being a stutterer and thanks to his perseverance learned how to talk to the crowds with passion and intensity, fluently.

What will it take for the leaders nowadays to break the „ceiling“ to the future, to increase the understanding about social media conversations around their brands? What will it take for the leaders to „FLUENTLY“ start to speak with „ordinary“ predominantly young people on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn?

Interesting facts regarding social media development worldwide:
Trends In Social Media Europe / Worldwide

Statistics on Low Social Media Understanding

Lesson From Japan: Seize Each Moment, There May Be No Tomorrow

Japan Earthquake followed by disastrous tsunami proved the old true – we have to live our lives fully at present, there may be no tomorrow.

We would never expect this to happen, even in our biggest nightmares. Japan is highly civilized country, with all the emergency plans, with all the sophisticated technical and electronics equipments in place. Still the Mother Nature shows us how vulnerable we – the human beings – are.

 It is not a punishment for some wrongdoing for Japanese people, but they have to take on their shoulders its burden now. Those who survived have to find the strength to cope with loosing family members and friends, their homes, jobs and places they felt connected to. They may be left out homeless, starving from lack of electricity and basic food supplies at present. Regardless how much fortune they have gathered in the past, regardless how much valuables they have collected. They are like “naked”, just with their memories from the past and the hope for better days to come.  

 It is never too late to say your family and friends how much you love and care about them. It is never too late to say thank you to those who deserve it. It is never too late to start to seize each moment of your life to find YOUR way to happiness.

You have to act now. Because nobody can be sure what the future brings.

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.” James Dean

“CARPE DIEM (Seize the Day)! “Horace

How To help Japan from the Czech Republic (according to server: Novinky.cz) ?

Salvation Army: SMS - DMS ARMADASPASY sent to Tel. No. 87 777 or bank transfer 475 335 533/0300, variable symbol 222.

Czech Red Cross - bank account 222826/5500, variable symbol 999.

Czech Doctors without borders  : bank account 2101050700 / 2700, variabilní symbol: 99

Steve Jobs’ Most Relevant Quotes, You Never Dare To Forget

I have been impressed with Steve Jobs’ last week’s speech on the launch of iPad 2. He came, though seriously ill. He put his passion into the show, despite his energy being exhausted by fighting illness and media speculating about his near death. He shined as always. The lasting standing ovations belonged to his well deserved reward.


I admire Steve Jobs for his leadership qualities. I am not so hard on his people skills gaps as some others may be (people at Apple are said to be at constant fear of losing their job). But Steve still attracts the best employees and he enthuses them to do great work for him. Apple stands for something for them. Apple has a reason for being that isn’t just about making money. Steve is a type of genius, artist, who has made his mark in the history and he could never be so successful without some of his unique personality traits.


What the great leaders do and Steve Jobs masters better than others?

VISION AND PURPOSE

      “Our customers want to know who is Apple and what do we stand for, where do we fit in this world. What we are about is not making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well, we do that better than anybody in some cases. But Apple is something more than that. Apple at the core, it’s core value is, that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.” 1997, Jobs’s speech to employees

“The goal was never to beat the competitors, or to make a lot of money, it was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater.”

PASSION  

“I am willing  to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that “vision thing” and I am not afraid to start from the beginning. “ Steve Jobs’ resume

“Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you are not going to survive. You are going to give up. So you’ve got to have an idea or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you’re passionate about, otherwise you’re not going to have the perseverance to stick in through. I think that’s half the battle right there.”

COURAGE

“I have always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they are harder. They’re more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.”

 “I looked to my hero Bob Dylan for inspiration. One of the things I admired about Dylan was his refusal to stand still. Many successful artists at some point in their careers atrophy: they keep doing what made them successful in the first place, but they don’t evolve. If they keep risking failure, they are still artists. Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure.”1998 for Fortune magazine

INVENTIVE SPIRIT

“Innovations has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” 1998 for Fortune

“Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.” 2004 for Business Week

PERSEVERANCE & PERFECTIONISM

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”     

“When you start looking at a problem and think it’s really simple, you don’t understand how complex the problem really is. Once you get into the problem… you see that it’s complicated and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep going, find the underlying problem, and come up with an elegant solution that works well on every level.”

DISCIPLINE AND DECISIVENESS

“Everything just got simpler. That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. We’ve got to focus and do things we can be good at”.” 1998 for Business Week

“We look at a lot of things, but I’m as proud of the products that we have not done as I am of the ones we have done.” 1998 for Wall Street Journal

INTEGRITY AND CHARACTER

„You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.“ Jobs Stanford Speech 2005

„Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.“ Jobs Stanford Speech 2005

„Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.“ Jobs Stanford Speech 2005

Once Steve Jobs said: “I want to put a ding in the Universe.” He certainly did.

Do not miss the video on his appearance in March 2011:
Steve Jobs Standing Ovations March 2011


The Beginning of Steve Jobs' Greatness / Video from 1984

Note: When the quote source not mentioned, than appeared in the book "Inside Steve's Brain" by Leander Kahney.

My other blog devoted to Steve Jobs and his mission: 
Steve Jobs Journey Toward Success - Another View