Creativity Technique: Twitter Brainstorming

In one of my previous posts, I reviewed the book The Tao of Twitter.  Inside the book, there was a brief description of a virtual brainstorming session that was quite clever.

The author has a "virtual" company.  He is a consultant with no employees.  He needed to fulfill a request for a client for some ideas, and he knew that to get the best ideas he needed to get some outside the box thinking, i.e. ideas from people other than him. 

As the author of a book on Tweeting, he has a pretty fleshed out Twitter Tribe, so he issued an invitation on Twitter to a web-meeting later that day.  He had several people who attended.  He outlined the problem.  He let the creative juices flow.

In less than 24 hours, he had a list of ideas to turn over to his client without spending a dollar on an agency.  Another advantage, he helped establish some personal relationships with people who prior to were just Twitter followers.

Social media allows you to reach out to a multitude of divergent thinkers with little cost and quick turnaround.  

How can you leverage your social media to stimulate innovation and creativity in your business?

Quote of the Day: Biz Stone

"Timing, perseverance and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success."  Biz Stone, Co-Founder, Twitter

Book Review: Tao of Twitter

I have a few confessions to make before I review this book. 

1. I struggle with Social Media.  I am excellent at posting pictures of my little boy on Facebook so that his adoring family can ooohh and aaaahhh over his cuteness, but I am much less disciplined on updating my LinkedIn, or posting to Instagram, or Tweeting.  Upon reading this book, I had maybe Tweeted 15 Tweets, ever.

2. I didn't understand the business purpose behind Twitter before I started and after reading the book, I still struggle.

3. I didn't love Mark Schaefer's other book - Born To Blog, but gave Tao of Twitter a chance anyway.

Full disclosure.  But here is the Creative Space rating:

Readability:  A
Creates Consistent Interest:  C
Applicability:  B
Design:  C
Differentiation:  A

Creative Space Takeaways:

1. My first takeaway was more a reflection after the fact, but I, like you, get piles of business cards after a conference.  It occurred to me that by adding these folks to my Twitter feed, it allows these relationships to essentially "run in the background" so if later there is a need for a more personal contact, the groundwork has been laid and in general, there is some grasp of what is going on with them in the "in between times."

2. Most of the Tao of Twitter was based on the three elements that could potentially drive tangible business and personal benefits:  1. Targeted Connections 2. Meaningful Content and 3. Authentic Helpfulness.  The author provides a few examples of how Twitter interactions helped drive business results for his company through these elements, but as I am not a consultant, the tangible benefits are a little harder to understand.

3. Twitter users are content creators for sure.  Tao of Twitter provided some stats from an ExactTarget survey that stated that more than 70 percent of Twitter users publish blog posts at least monthly, 70 percent comment on blogs, and 61 percent write at least one product review monthly.  Further, daily Twitter users are six times more likely to publish articles, five times more likely to post blogs, etc. etc.  My biggest concern here is if Twitter is just being used by content creators how far is the reach for people who just consume.  Is Twitter just a little incestuous tribe of people who like to opine?

4. "If you have fewer than 200 people who are connecting with you, Twitter will be boring."  This is me.  I have fewer than 200 people.  I am both lame and bored.  Later in the book, it says that if you have just 20 minutes a day to devote to social media, spend it building a Twitter Tribe of 200.  Then your social media will start to grow more organically.

5. To get Twitter followers, "do a basic search."  I tried this, I searched #innovation, #creativity, #wellbeing and so on and so forth to look for people who were Tweeting on these topics.  The process was still like pulling teeth, but in all honesty, I put in about ten minutes.  Will do better next time.  I promise.

6. Tweet three times a day, at different times a day.  I have never achieved this, not even a single day.  Totally makes sense though- it keeps you in the feeds of people who only check once a day.  Provides enough touchpoints to provide the personal touch tweets plus meaningful, business, building content.  Maybe I will set this as a goal for a week, see if I fall in love with Twitter.  Because there are people who are in love with Twitter.  (Which I suspect is similar in nature to those who are in love with going to the gym.)

7. Twitter acronyms.  I don't know jack about Twitter acronyms, but the Tao of Twitter did provide a glossary so now I am hip to RT (Retweet) and MT (Modified Tweet).  I have no idea how I would have figured this out without reading the book.  Seriously.

8. Hashtags for me are a source of contention.  As an avid Facebook user, it annoys me that so many people hashtag when Facebook doesn't search based on Hashtags.  But they are super useful in Twitter for searching and curating content.  Feel free to hashtag #findcreativespace :)

9. Because most people have multiple social media platforms to manage, the author provides some options, such as Hootsuite, to keep it all together. The huge advantage is that you can schedule your three tweets a day, at different times a day, without actually tweeting that often.  #hugetimesaver

10. To learn Twitter, you have to do Twitter.   This was the most important.  I think this book would have been much more important and usable for me if I was already at least a basic user of Twitter.  Usually I donate my books as soon as I am done, but I think I am going to try what I have learned a little bit and then revisit The Tao of Twitter in order to get the best value/information from it.