Facebook - Twitter

[SRE]

Anyone using social media to generate work - is it working?? Does it take much time to keep on top off?

 

[TedM]

I use Facebook - but just to keep tabs on what my kids are up to and some personal interest stuff.

Twitter is a bit more useful, as it is widely populated by journalists and politicians. There are quite a few solar/green companies using it. I see it more as a networking mechanism and for distributing press releases or for publicising any blog or website articles/updates you have. i.e. it will gain you a bit of exposure/credibility (depending on what you say!) within a small industry sphere but is not likely to get you real customers. The best opportunity would be to get picked up by some of the journalists and get your quotes used in their articles but that's not going to happen over-night.

I probably dip in to Twitter a couple of times a day to see what is happening. I might make 10 posts in one day and then go a week without posting anything. If you get serious with it you need software such as TweetDeck to keep track of everything.

 

[Somecamel]

I use Twitter but mostly to keep up to date with what is going on in the world on Solar I follow Ted

 

[JulianC]

Use Facebook and set up a company page - handy for sticking out snippets of news, special offers etc. Or at least it would be if we had more "friends".

Today's survey came via a contact on LinkedIn.

Never tweeted though. Had a quick look once but couldn't work out what the hell was going on.

 

[SRE]

I use Twitter but mostly to keep up to date with what is going on in the world on Solar I follow Ted

Me too!

 

[SRE]

Don't laugh - apparently I need Tweetdeck! that will co-ordinate Facebook, Google +, Twitter & Linked in all on one screen and make them easier to update. I spent a couple of hours doing some boring paperwork this morning and to make it a bit more interetsing I dipped into twitter a few times and tweeted. Result is a couple of business support companies local to me are now following and I've got one local journalist.

Heating has broken down and I'm too cold to carry on today but I'm going to set up facebook and Google + - apparently Google + automatically gets you up the rankings if you can manage to update it regularly so it helps with your website ranking. Was at a networking meeting last night and picked up a couple of potential customers from somewhere I didn't really think was my target market.

Setting myself a target of 10 tweets a day for a week and see what happens....

 

[Somecamel]

Let us know your twitter name and Ill add you. I'm @bexhillenergy

 

[TedM]

The problem with Facebook is the 'like' scheme. Unless you do some sort of special promotion from elsewhere (say on your website you offer a free entry into a competition for everyone who 'likes' you) then you are stuck within a small group of people who you already know.

You can pay for advertising on Facebook and target it via demographic selection which seems quite flexible but I've not been tempted to try it yet.

On Twitter I'd recommend you only Tweet if you really have something worthwhile to say. There are some individuals (no names!) who don't follow this principle and they end up just looking sad. Feel free to reply to anything I say!

If you feel the need to Tweet about non-work related stuff then get yourself a second id and keep personal stuff separate.

If you don't understand how Twitter works or can work for you (I gave up the first time I tried it as I just couldn't figure it out or see the point) then have a look at this short guide to the basics: mom, this is how twitter works. | not just for moms!

Twitter's web interface is much improved over the past few months so you can do most of what you need straight from your browser now.

I'm far from being a Twitter expert but if you have any questions feel free to ask.

 

[TedM]

Oh, if you want to follow me on Twitter I'm @too_far_away

And you can find most of the people I follow via my UK Solar list https://twitter.com/#!/too_far_away/uksolar