To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

January 21, 2011 at 10:59 pm 14 comments

Lately I have been wondering whether to start a Twitter account for the business. My initial thought when Twitter first took off was that it really wasn’t for me – partly based on the fact that  my life is actually quite dull (the thought of having to come up with interesting things to report on a regular basis seemed a chore I could do without), partly based on the fact that I have no idea how to use my phone for email and  so if I ever did come up with something interesting to report the chance of my being in front of a computer was small, and partly based on the fact that I’m slightly obsessive by nature and was afraid I’d end up not getting any work done because I was constantly checking my Twitter feed.

But then, spurred on by Higgledy Ben’s budding Twitter friendship with the great Ms Raven (and her long list of potential followers-cum-customers) and, after a bit of a browse, realising that a couple of friends from college had some very impressive contacts these days, I started to reconsider.

This week, I’ve been looking at it intermittently, checking out a few friends’ and interesting people’s feeds and trying to make a decision. At one point I searched for JW Blooms to see if anybody else was using it as their moniker and instead it came up with a couple of tweets recommending me. Hey! Suddenly it’s looking more tempting…

But I’ve also found nothing of real interest – vaguely interesting stuff, yeah, but nothing that has seemed like a good return on the amount of time that slightly-obsessive-I would undoubtedly end up putting into it. On the other hand, I don’t want to be left behind or miss out on a great marketing tool. Most people getting married are young. If their way of finding a wedding florist is to tweet “Anyone know a good florist in Somerset?”, do I want to miss out on the chance of someone saying, “Yeah, check out @jwblooms”?

I really can’t make up my mind.

Anybody?

PS I know it’s been the most perfect weather for photos this week, and I know I’ve been going on about how glorious it has been in the polytunnel, but I’ve failed to take a single photo, so apologies that the blog is looking a bit dull. Tomorrow, if the weather holds.

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Just Round The Corner Get Weaving

14 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Benjamin Ranyard  |  January 21, 2011 at 11:51 pm

    i’ve amassed about 250 followers on Twitter…sounds good doesn’t it? Actually I think they will be little or no use to Higgledy in the long run…generally people who ‘follow’ you simply want you to follow them back…most are in the USA (Useless for Higgledy)…I will keep it up however…instead of thinking of clever things to say I just give a brief overview of a blog post…like “how to grow Calaendular’ and put a link to the site.
    Your followers will be much more important to you if they ‘follow you’ from your site..ie they have visited and like the site and click on an icon to follow you…
    I make sure I don’t spend more than five minutes on twitter and instead spend more time writing good quality (I hope) posts for the blog…and even then I think I would need a couple of thousand visits a week to make that effort worth it in sales!!! (Presently running at about 700 per week)
    Oh life is hard… 😉

    Reply

    • 2. Benjamin Ranyard  |  January 22, 2011 at 8:47 am

      (Usually I try and spell the flowers correctly)

      Reply

      • 3. jwblooms  |  January 22, 2011 at 10:06 am

        Hmm, I like your idea of limiting your time each day to five minutes – am I grown-up enough to stick to that, though?
        And I find a little original spelling just shows people how creative you are! x

  • 4. Simon  |  January 22, 2011 at 12:27 am

    Short answer, Janet, you should Tweet. You can set it up so that your blog automatically tweets when you publish a new post, so there’s no effort needed there. Plus you can pass along links to any sites/posts/news items that you see online that you think would interest your customers. Doing that (which, again, requires minimal effort as most sites now have a ‘tweet this’ button) can only help your brand. One caveat — keep all the tweets directly related to adding value for people who want to grow/buy/learn about flowers. That can cover much more than just info about your current offerings (although it should include that) but will encourage people to keep you as a trusted source of tweeted info on a subject they care about. Good luck! S

    Reply

    • 5. Benjamin Ranyard  |  January 22, 2011 at 8:46 am

      I didn’t know there was an auto tweet for posts…I shall scurry around and find how to do it. Thx Simon.

      Reply

      • 6. jwblooms  |  January 22, 2011 at 10:11 am

        Hi, Simon. Yes, I think I need to decide on a purpose for it. Am slightly worried it might just turn into an account of my delight at the temperature in the polytunnel. (You’ll have forgotten such simple pleasures being in California…) x

  • 7. artistsgarden  |  January 22, 2011 at 10:58 am

    Twitter is quite fun – but slightly time consuming!
    It probably is a good idea to get a twitter button so that your posts are automatically tweeted – because some of your followers might “re-tweet” them and you may get new visitors to your blog. You should be able to set up a twitter widget from your wordpress dashboard after you have created an account.

    I think the thing about twitter is the “personal” bit – although it is primarily for your business I think it is better if you interact a bit on twitter as it is so nice to have a glimpse of the person behind the business – and the fact that it is warm in the polytunnel is quite fine!
    K

    Reply

    • 8. jwblooms  |  January 22, 2011 at 6:16 pm

      Another good point. Thanks, Karen. (Absolutely freezing in the tunnel today – just to keep you up to date!)

      Reply

      • 9. artistsgarden  |  January 23, 2011 at 1:11 am

        Yep – freezing here to-day, both in and out of the tunnel – but you will be pleased to know I was finishing my tax return.

        I also see you have done your first tweet! You took the plunge then
        🙂
        K

  • 10. Benjamin Ranyard  |  January 22, 2011 at 11:12 pm

    oi! I see you tweeting out there on my patch young lady!!!
    Top tweet tip… because you haven’t many characters to use you should shorten your link back to your site…this is dead easy…first copy it…then go to http://www.bitly.com and paste it into the massive blue bos…hey presto it changes to something really short…easy peasy…for some reason which is beyond me it is considered tweeting etiquette to shorten links…I don’t always…coz i’m a rebel…xxx (does that make any sense!?)

    Reply

  • 13. jwblooms  |  January 23, 2011 at 8:08 pm

    So once it’s changed it to something shorter, you just cut and paste the new link? And you do that for any links you use (so as not to use up your 140 characters)? x

    Reply

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