Going back to the start of my experience on social media I was more used to LinkedIn and never thought of Twitter as a tool for the business. If not for a conversation with a client, the fantastic Becs McNeill @becsmcneill instilling some insight during a 1-2-1 that I created a profile and went from there. Bit of a rocky start but these things take a bit of time. When the journey gets interesting was a year plus in – I was at a healthy 1,200 followers and heard about Theo Paphitis #SBS (Small Business Sunday), so decided to join in.
Many tweets and over four months later I won on the 16th October 2011, email went on meltdown for a night and the week was spent responding and spending as much time getting to know those that had followed, fellow winners and lots of new glorious contacts. I'm a firm believer in grabbing opportunities and one win led to another and more time on Twitter led to getting to know more fellow winners. I saw that a few winners were offering #SBS badges to winners and thought I might offer an alternative.
The #SBS benefits started happening shortly after the new year in 2012, when a fellow winner wanted to talk about a re-brand and stationery. Others contacted me based on seeing my award badge styles and a few just wanted to chat. All benefits as it's not just about direct business where the business has come, it's come from fellow winners referring and pointing people towards me.
So my advice to anyone taking part in the variety of Twitter competitions is simple, be a business and not a 'diva'! Follow back all those that have spent time to do the same, communicate, get to know them and the benefits will come and might bring some unexpected surprises too.
The business has been fornunate to network with a variety of different business both in the UK and across the world which has resulted in work from overseas and being involved with a variety of other competitions and networking on Twitter which has resulted a variety of different award badges which bring daily exposure to the business.
Inspired by the activity on Twitter the business design a range of #TwitterGeek and #TwitterGeekette graphics and promotional items, which in itself has opened some very interesting doors and on a Sunday during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II the business decided to start its own Twitter competiton (started as a bit of fun and grown from there) and that has been proven to be royally fruitful for both the business and the competition entrants.
The results of the #SBS win and other social media activity has been the following – being introduced to new contacts some of which have become good friends and other clients, increased my Twitter followers which are now over 23,000 over the 3 business accounts, passed over 100k tweets, had the opportunity of working on internal communications projects for Ryman Stationery, general awareness of the business on social media has grown, rmoved in to an office and the businesses website SEO has gone through the roof.
