me: We are here with Bear Files from @evolutionfiles. Welcome to #140Chat.
Bear: Hiya Julio, it’s really great to be chatting with you.
me: First question. Why do you use Twitter?
Bear: I started hearing about it a year or so back and just couldn’t resist trying it out. Then I got hooked.
me: It is addicting
Bear: Addicting, that’s the word I would use too. But also powerful, in creating relationships.
me: How so? How has it helped you create relationships?
Bear: Maybe enabling relationships is a better description.
As a solopreneur having a platform like Twitter is great.
Reaching out via Twitter has allowed me to connect to
some super people. With some bigger brains than mine.
me: What about clients? Are your clients on Twitter?
Bear: A few are. But more will be soon, I am sure.
I feel it’s important for me to be up to speed on Twitter in order to advise them.
me: Good point. It definitely makes anyone more social media savvy
if used well. Ok, a few more questions
Answer this one: Twitter would be the greatest thing in the
history of mankind if it could only _____
Bear: add a video feature like skype.
Tweeting with people is great, adding video would be even better.
me: I think the same thing! Ok what SUCKS about Twitter?
Let it go and rant away
Bear: Gosh that’s hard. People using it to auto-blast out
their message and not engaging at all.
Of course the overly-cute Twitter bots don’t help anything.
me: Here is our take: unless you are the NY Times don’t stream links all the time.
Bear: And the fail whale. That’s about it. It’s evolving so quickly I see 99% positive things with it.
me: Cool.
Ok just a few more questions. If I could only follow three people of Twitter,
they would be _____
Bear: @julito77 of course, @ShellyKramer and @LissaDuty …some amazingly helpful friends.
me: We LOVE @ShellyKramer
She is amazing
Ok, what are your Twitter goals for 2011?
Bear: Listen more. Learn more.
And help clients to use it as part of their marketing efforts.
me: Well, we wish you the best of luck.
See you in the stream! It was a pleasure
Bear: Thanks, Julio, for being a mentor
to me here on Twitter. Hope your year is great as well.
me: Thanks!
That chat session was really fun, Julio. Thanks for having me on your #140chat. You may not know this but I have been carefully watching your approach to Twitter.
About 6 months ago I was mostly pushing out links and engaging infrequently. After watching how comfortable you were conversing and sharing personal info I decided to follow your lead. What surprised me was how much more comfortable it became after just a few weeks. It was liberating really.
My tweets are now about 80% engagement, and I am having more fun and feeling more comfortable being authentic and sharing personal stuff. The number of RTs and followers is growing quickly, and I chalk it up to the increased engagement. So thanks for being my secret mentor!
Wow, that is so cool! Having fun is what Twitter is all about. Glad you stuck to it.
Thanks for this Julio and Bear. I really enjoyed this interview – and I’ll tell you why! I am also addicted to twitter and the secret mentoring that Julio delivered for Bear continues. I have watched how Bear interacts with his network and have learned hugely from that. I didn’t “get” twitter for at least the first 6 months that I used it. I did retweet, I didn’t self promote and I did provide links to biz content – but I never really reached out and engaged with my network. Bear always thanked me for RTs and I started to tweet back. I started to tweet with others and now every day it’s a huge inspiration when I crank up tweetdeck and see what conversations and ideas I am involved with. Twitter is only starting to catch on amongst biz in my area (in this corner of Ireland). My local Chamber of Commerce has asked me to do a “training lunch” where members will get together for a light lunch and I’ll deliver a short presentation on twitter for biz. We plan to hold a tweetup after that. So thank you gentleman -I hope you enjoy this wee tale of what you have inspired. Take a bow Bear and Julio.
So cool!
Helen, thanks for sharing how your Twitter journey has been progressing. I am so glad that the not-so-secret engagement strategies that I’ve learned from Julio (and @ShellyKramer) over the past year have rubbed off on you. Twitter addicts unite! Businesses in my local area are also slow to utilize Twitter, which does open some speaking/training opportunities – let’s share the Twitter secrets! I’ll email you some speaking curriculum I’ve created in case it helps you in doing talks to your local business folks.
Hi, my name is Julito77 and I am a Twitter addict.