This was the first time I heard Guy Kawasaki speak. Frankly, I am so new to Twitter, I didn’t even know he is kind of the “Twitter King” at least right now. Mr. Kawasaki is surely at the forefront of the many that are all atwitter about Twitter. He is currently the managing director of Garage Technology Ventures (early stage venture capital firm) as well as a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. He is also a co-founder of Alltop, a website magazine rack of sorts.
It would be a gross understatement to say that Kawasaki likes Twitter. He loves it, as he puts it, as much as Macintosh and he loves Macintosh, having spent much of his career there developing and maintaining the cult-like following of the Mac brand.
His presentation was quite useful. Kawasaki feels that Twitter is the biggest thing since sliced bread or more specifically, TV. In a nutshell, his advice for Twitter is to “get involved.” Start following people and always follow those that follow you. He says it’s a numbers game and about achieving critical mass. As importantly, you must be a giver … a tweeter … of useful content; content that is useful enough to be retweeted over and over again. Internet Marketing is always ultimately about content and Kawasaki says nothing to dispel that principal.
For most, including Kawasaki, the marketing value of Twitter is not initially obvious. Twitter asks a very basic question … What are you doing now? This is what millions are doing 24/7 using a microblogging interface that restricts the tweeter to 140 characters. So, there are a great many tweets about relatively nothing i.e. “I am going to wash my car now.” Who cares?
However, if that is all Twitter means to an individual then it will remain trivial and quite meaningless for that individual. Kawasaki discussed how the interaction with larger and larger group of followers presents tremendous business opportunities. Twitter is searchable and very powerfully at that. So, followers of similar interests including buying and selling interests can find each other. It is pure and simple, social networking at its essence … and we are barely in the first inning as few are just beginning to recognize the power and opportunities of Twitter and the social media in general. For now, my take is that you have to be there.
Guy Kawaski spent a large portion of his time itemizing and reviewing the huge number of tools for leveraging what is available on Twitter. These tools allow you to analyze, track, monitor and filter the important metrics you are interested in and specifically the tweets that deserve your time and attention.
The keynote was well worthwhile as Kawasaki provided a good deal of insight and information about Twitter and the many tools to make it work from an Internet Marketing perspective. His obvious free spirit style and candor was great.
Tell us what you think by commenting right here.
Arthur Cooper
Follow Arthur on Twitter
http://www.linkedin.com/in/optimum7arthurcooper
One Comment
Guy Rocks, he posts loads of interesting links and info. Alltop is also kicking.