Yesterday, Mark Lee (BookMarkLee, tax advice network, speaker & writer on social media for accountants, tax, and practice positioning & development), had a little Twitter Competition on the subject of Why Bother with Social Media. He asked:
Any accountants who’d like a mention during my talk @ #clouda21 , please answer the Q: Why should accountants bother with social media?”
I tweeted back, somewhat off-handedly,
“because it pleasantly passes the time, whilst on hold to #HMRC
”
and I didn’t really expect to hear much else, as surely there’s bound to be a very slick answer related to marketing, “client engagement”, “relationship management” etc… etc… from one of the two thousand or so accountants who follow Mark on twitter, and I wasn’t wrong. So I was very surprised when he named mine as favourite.
So, what is the point my being on twitter, then, if not all those other marketing things?
I’ll be honest – I have no idea.
When Twitter first arrived, it was described as a micro-blogging platform and well, I already had a full-size blog, thanks very much and what’s more, Twitter was cluttered with hashtags and @ signs – really not very neat at all. So, I was secretly relieved when I read Mark Lee’s blog (of Dec 2008, so some while ago) that said “Twitter is not for Accountants“… phew…
However, some while later, I noticed decided that my website ranking could do with a boost and I had read that Twitter could help with this. Unfortunately, tweets that say “look at my website” with a link to a company’s website are probably the most boring tweets ever (although, I do tweet links to new posts on this blog.) Coupled with the fact that I couldn’t think of anything to tweet that didn’t sound utterly desperate to go with such a link, I rarely – if ever – have tweeted a link to www.figurate.co.uk and well, in any case, with 71% of tweets being ignored, (according to Sysomos) what would be the point?
Ah, so now what? Well, nothing really. I gave up with Twitter as a marketing tool, pretty much as soon as I started (which was right after I worked out how to put a colour-co-ordinated twitter feed widget on a website). I haven’t used it to collected masses of follower numbers (as can probably be ascertained from my following/follower count, despite being on twitter since Jan 2010 – thank you Mark for sparing my blushes, though).
But I have used Twitter to:
- thank people (that felt good),
- get the random piece of information
- the odd laugh
- occasional piece breaking news
- chatter
I even found out I was nominated for an award via a Twitter DM (“Most Innovative Accounting Firm” – thank you Bookkeeping Awards/BKN)
Actually, Twitter has effectively replaced working in a busy open-plan office with all the attendant conversation, hustle & bustle and the occasional exchange of useful information, with the added bonus of being able to switch it off.
I have no plans to “leverage” my social media (that sounds like awfully hard work and not much fun at all). Social Media suggests “social” which in turn, suggests fun, which suggests it shouldn’t be too arduous.
And yes, it is a rather pleasant way to pass the time, whilst on hold to HMRC.
Louise is on Twitter as @Figurate and also on Linked-In.
The twitter account specially for this blog is @HappyAcc and is primarily an automated feed.
Figurate Ltd also has a Facebook Page and a Linked-In Profile.
