By: Jerry Aulenbach
Jerry Aulenbach (@zoomjer) was mentor at a small group mentorship event this year. The following is his reflection on the event.
It was a cold wintry day. We were in a nondescript board room of an uninteresting downtown Edmonton high rise. We broke into 3 small groups of about 5 people each and started to discuss the ins and outs of social media for business. As I focus mostly on twitter, that's what we discussed the most.
Believe it or not, I've got a Bachelor of Education degree, but I've never taught in the classroom outside my practicum (needless to say, it wasn't for me). Despite that, I do love teaching and training others. Twitter is so big and so abstract that it can be hard to comprehend and somewhat overwhelming for someone trying to venture in on their own. Knowing the struggles a lot of people have when they start out, I was able to make some clarifications for them and give a little guidance. I mostly taught principals rather than actions or rules. For example, a principal would be to make it a common practice to reply to people and engage in lots of conversations. Another would be to tweet about business and personal things. Keep a good mix of both, but don't limit yourself to 1 tweet in X about business or whatever it may be. Just be yourself and enjoy the ride. I discourage rules which make you seem too rigid and systematic. Here's something to avoid, though: auto private messages when someone follows you, encouraging them to visit your site. That's a cardinal sin. Just don't do it, please. It is a highly effective way to get unfollowed and disliked.
Here are my tips for someone brand new to twitter: http://myba.co/naction. For a more comprehensive look into how I use social media, and for advanced tips, read this: http://myba.co/npolicy.
