net.mentor

Last week I delivered a Talking Heads workshop on webPR to a group of delegates eager to learn the latest techniques of digital media and PR in the 21st Century.  It’s taken me a week to post this blog, because I needed time to reflect (and because Saturdays aren’t an ideal time to garner responses).

Heather Yaxley, better know to the blogosphere for her Greenbanana blog, was my co-tutor and we spent a stimulating day discussing SEO,  PR techniques and content writing for websites, social media, and creating a blog and podcast to show how easy it all is.

Naturally, throughout the day, we spent time talking about Twitter and its benefits of quick response, fast distribution, trending, citizen journalism, etc.  So what better way, I thought, to demonstrate this than to put a question out there and seek a response from the Tweeple (the people who Twitter). “Anyone got any good examples of webPR best practice?” I asked in wide-eyed anticipation.  I just wanted a couple of external ideas to inform our workshop debate from some other experts.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was where Twitter and its exponents showed its true colours. I #tagged, I @tagged and I sent directs. Heather re-tweeted. The response was fantastic.

NOTHING! Not a sausage, nada, zip, f*(&% all.  Now, I’m not arrogant or self opinionated enough to think that Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross or Richard Branson would sit bolt upright, drop whatever celebrity-dripping activity they were doing at the time and yell “Peter Brill’s asked me a question, I really MUST respond!” I also know that I’m a very long way from hitting my million followers. But some of the people I do follow are self-proclaimed social media ‘gurus’ who spend their entire waking hours, apparently, Tweeting their latest discoveries and words of wisdom to their glorious world of followers.

So where were you when you had the opportunity to demonstrate to sceptical PR practioners who are earning a living from the daily grind of messages delivery that social media really works? What happened that you missed an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise in a truly didactic context?

Don’t bother trying to tell me that you happened to be out at that moment, because if you haven’t already worked this out for yourselves, I could see you Twittering plenty at the same time – one of you even twittered a link about how Twitter is all about listening!!

I enjoy Twitter, it’s quick, it’s mobile and it’s easy to use.  But I’m also of the opinion that everyone is on ‘transmit’ and no-one has yet worked out what Twitter is really trying to achieve. Everybody is so busy demonstrating how busy they are being a  busy and important part of everybody else’s business, that they’ve completely lost sight of the basic principles of dialogue.

So when an opportunity presents itself to demonstrate just how positive a role Twitter can play in communications dialogue and education, it’s biggest exponents weren’t receiving.  They were too busy telling us how they’d just got out of bed, farted and brushed their teeth.

I’m sure there will be plenty of comments (one would be nice) about how I could have done this, that or the other to have changed the outcome.  Too late!  Apparently, the thing about Twitter is it’s incredible immediacy.  The moment is past. 

So our delegates left with their scepticism about Twitter intact, and I’m just carrying on transmitting tweets along with the rest of the tworld in the  hope that someone, somewhere might actually explain why they hell we’re all bothering.