I’ve always been an advocate of Twitter as it provides a solid platform for me to learn, engage and share my thoughts around topics that I advocate both personally and professionally.
Twitter is becoming my 3-minute go-to briefing resource before I meet with anyone. It splits an interesting line between the personal world of Facebook and the professional world of LinkedIn (for most users).
It’s no surprise that leading sales and marketing professionals saw this as an opportunity to connect with potential buyers through engaging conversations earlier on in the sales process.
Are you really that surprised? Here are 3 reasons Twitter has dethroned LinkedIn by making it easier to grow better business relationships with the people who matter most.
How accurate is your LinkedIn profile? We all try to keep it up to date as best as possible, but the truth is, LinkedIn profiles still remain fairly static in a world where dynamic content is king.
We are all so meticulous with our professional profiles to impress potential employers or fellow colleagues with our accolades that our personalities are often lost in translation.
I’m not saying LinkedIn isn’t an incredibly valuable tool, I’m simply advocating that one’s LinkedIn profile doesn’t paint an accurate picture of who that person is or what they care about. It provides you with historical work information, not insight into their world (unless they are actively publishing).
On the other hand, Twitter is the most dynamic social media platform as it provides a constant stream of updates giving you a better perspective of what someone cares about, right now.
Where else can you learn about someone’s personal passions and professional interests in 140 characters or less? Real-time updates are by far the best way to gain a true perspective into one’s world as there are far fewer filters and much more personality.
Startup advisor & social selling evangelist, Jill Rowley, was recently interviewed on Forbes following the study from Kitedesk highlighting that she can learn more personal things about a buyer on Twitter than LinkedIn, including who they follow, what lists they subscribe to and what they Tweet about.
Twitter provides the perfect platform to share what you care about, whether it’s a personal or professional update, content based on topics that you care about or breaking news that you find interesting.
Each of these updates shed more light into the world you care about. Take a moment to think about one influencer who you’d love to connect with, head over to their Twitter stream and review their last 10-20 Tweets. How easy would it be for you to craft an authentic comment based on one of those updates?
Porter Gale, Former VP of Marketing of Virgin America, author of the award-winning book “Your Network is Your Net Worth” coaches professionals from around the world to use her funnel test to define their purpose based on passions.
Regardless if you’re familiar with the funnel test or not (you really should watch the video linked above), you’re likely already sharing updates on Twitter based on your passions that somehow relate to your end goal or purpose.
Hashtags have become one of the most game-changing elements in the social media world. On average, there are 6,000 Tweets every second, 350,000 every minute, 500 million per day and 200,000 billion per year. How in the world would we ever be able to find value without a filter?
In 2014, Salesforce’s wildly famous Dreamforce Conference was reaching between 15,000 – 20,000 tweets per hour during some of the keynote sessions. If that isn’t the definition of “social media chaos”, I don’t know what is!
Hashtags make connecting with others on Twitter who share a common interest incredibly easy. If there’s a topic you want to discuss or an event you want to follow while sitting on your couch, hashtags make this possible.
On the other hand, LinkedIn doesn’t offer the same capabilities because users don’t post nearly as often and if they do, it becomes frustrating for the people connected to them. I do agree, however, that serendipitous interactions on LinkedIn’s news feed are far more common than on Twitter.
That said, Google is the perfect example of how we learn in today’s digital world of information overload. We love to search for things and Twitter makes this possible. If you know what you want to achieve, you can do it faster with the power of Twitter search and hashtags.
Twitter continues to evolve and take the business world by storm. Both businesses and professionals are discovering new ways to leverage this incredibly powerful social network to achieve their goals faster by growing relationships with the people who matter.
There’s no doubt a major issue with Twitter’s overly cluttered news feed as we continue to grow our networks beyond a manageable count that go far beyond Dunbar’s 150 relationships.
That said, there are companies already working to solve this issue so that you can keep up with important updates as they relate to you and your network. It’s clear that LinkedIn is no longer the only social media network offering a competitive edge in the professional world.