Image via WikipediaWell, some do, but I suspect many who are modern enough to have tried social media marketing are giving up because they haven’t seen results. Why do I think so? Well, I talk to quite a lot of people what I am out and about. I also have a Twitter list of “tax-guys-and-girls” numbering 133 currently who are all accountants or tax advisers or something pretty close. I have noticed that the stream moves more slowly than it did a year or even six months ago. There is far less tweeting going on in this list.
I have gained work through Twitter, and I have passed work on through referrals, and not only tax and accounting work. Twitter is part of the glue which makes for a community network. Twitter has put me in contact with others in my field whom I could not have heard about through any other network. Many I feel I know quite well through our online conversations. Not all these exchanges are even about business matters. The personal stuff helps give a more rounded picture of a person.
The trouble is that a lot of “professionals”, by which I mean accountants and solicitors, don't give Twitter or other online platforms long enough and they don't get it. They pound out their adverts (yawn) and they send automated tweets to technical articles and say nothing else. They don't find topical things for others to read, they don't talk to each other, and especially they don't listen.
Using Twitter is much like any other sort of networking. You get out of it what real value you put in. No one should (though some do) go to a networking meeting just to hand out their business cards and brochures. Networking is about having conversations. It is about listening more than talking.
The trouble is that some people just don’t have the patience. They don't let their personalities come through, they don't understand and they don't ask for help. It's their loss. Strange, isn’t it?
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