Last night kicked off Jeff Pulver’s NYC 140 Character Conference with a cocktail party at Room Service NYC . One of the things I appreciate the most about Jeff, is his ability to bring exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds together, while still keeping a single focus of the real-time web.
All evening my head was spinning as I turned from one great conversation to the next. Great face, after great face. Fresh idea, after fresh idea. New perspective, after new perspective. Josh of Gowalla. Idan of Boxee. Scott of Laughing Squid. Maya of Memetales (who is also one of my all time favorite Seattlites). Namedrop. Namedrop. Namedrop.
One person I was thrilled to see was Liz Strauss. A force, a doer, a mother, a wife, and a personal hero. I spent a good portion of the evening speaking with her and listening to her updates on SobCon (taking place next week!) and her current projects. Then she turned the conversation to me.
Liz: So, what are you currently working on?
A simple question, sure, but when asked by your hero its a bit more difficult to answer because you want to sound all impressive and stuff. So I cleared my throat to sound tough or something.
Me: Well, my background is PR, but I’m helping lead the community strategy for my agency, and building a few of our clients’ brand communities.
Liz: Is that what you want to do?
Again, simple question. But as I said, when you’re asked by your hero you want to sound brainy.
Me: Yes, truth is, I love it. But in terms of my personal growth, well, I think I’m spending to much time tweeting.
Liz: That sounds like a title of a blog post.
Speaking with Liz made me really think about my impact. What am I doing to help my clients each day? Is each tweet (or the time I spend trolling Twitter) resulting in ROI for my brands? Am I curating enough useful information to justify the time? And if I spend too much time tweeting, am I dulling my skill set in other areas?
Twitter is a useful tool, I’m not saying it’s not. If it weren’t full of interesting content, Jeff would have an entire conference build around the 140 character concept. And without Twitter, I wouldn’t know Liz.
…but, it can also prove to be a waste of my personal time when I allow it. I want to continue to grow, to learn and evolve. I want to have more depth than 140 characters.
Over the next few weeks, particularly during my upcoming vacation, I’m hope to spend a lot of time thinking about how I can make a difference for my brands and agency outside of the tweet box. It’s a challenge I’m looking forward to, and hope to share my learnings with you.
Suggestions on how to get started?
Interesting thought. As a consultant I concentrate on delivering solutions that create immediate business value for my clients.
I do this by understanding the goals of their business and how they navigate their competitive niche. This is based on their strengths, weaknesses, skills and talents as well as those of their competitors. I create solutions which allow them to fill in their weaknesses and maximize their strengths vs. their competitors.
I imagine such a rubric would allow you to evaluate your activities.
I believe in the power of serendipity – as long as I do not start depending on it
By that, what I mean is that I love twitter for the little discoveries I make – but there is only that much time I will give for chances and discovery ….because we all have limited resources
At this point I wish I had a little more time to connect with people on twitter – but I really do not…
I would say have a plan and go with your gut. When I feel like I am tweeting too much, I back off and just focus on other things
BUT it was SO SO awesome seeing you !! Thank you for including me in your post!
If you stopped tweeting so much you could finish that screenplay we were talking about regarding the missing flash drive. Get on that.
Funny that you should wonder if you’re tweeting too much- I find that I’m spending an increasing amount of time on Twitter as part of the learning (and relationship-building) process, and it stands to reason that my use of Twitter will plateau over time after I’ve gotten a grip on the most efficient way to use it.
It’s also important to consider what kind of Tweeting you’re doing. Just sending out short messages is a different use of your time than actually having conversations with consumers about your brands and finding out what it is that they really want.