I always worry that I’m going to get in over my head with new technology … no matter how simple it may look to you, I tend to get myself in a predicament that winds up being painful. I’m not what you’d call a technophobe. Technoboob is more accurate.
I’m very detail-oriented when it comes to writing. But when the subject is technology, I often stick my fingers in my ears.
Quick story. My mother was a systems engineer for IBM for 28 years, starting in 1954. When I was in junior high school, she often took me to her office in Hammond, Indiana, so she could work on a Saturday afternoon.
Year: 1960. Picture a huge office – to me, at age 13, anyway – filled by … a single computer. And from the computer were big cables, connecting to peripherals in corners of the office. And on either side of the actual computer – which probably had a footprint of 200 square feet – were 5 desks, manned (womanned?) by punch card operators. Every program was a huge set of punch cards, each with a certain pattern of 0s and 1s punched out.
It was all absurd to me.
About 1978, when the Commodore-64 and the TRS-80 personal computers came on the market, I told my wife, “No one will ever buy a home computer. They’re way too complicated.”
Now … I have other technoboob credentials, but that comment certainly should give you the idea.
Which brings us to Twitter.
(If you want to join me on Twitter, go to http://Twitter.com/rden)
Like all these gadgets, I’ve resisted Twitter for quite some time. But now, friends have pointed out some very good marketing reasons to use it. For instance, you can target all the Twitterers who are using the exact keywords your prospects would use. That’s pretty hot. I’ll talk more about it in another post.
But here’s the point right now. You can follow those people on Twitter, and when many of them follow you back, you can send them a message like this:
Thanks for the connection – I value it. If you’d like to talk and network, add me on Facebook: http://profile.to/RichardDennis
That is 124 characters, under Twitter’s 140-character limit. You’re not trying to sell anything, and it’s not pushy – which is important, this being the social media. Those who friend you on Facebook are, I think, pretty hot leads for you. They are tweeting about a highly-relevant keyword phrase (which we have discussed at great length on this blog), and they have followed you off Twitter, over to Facebook, and added you.
Very good indication that this is a person you may be able to build a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with. And this system could be an easy way to feed your net traffic machine every day.
What do you think?
Richard Dennis