Last Thursday, New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJSCPA) Digital Communications Manager
Rachael Bell and I completed our fourth and final social media training session for Society staff.
Just to back up for a moment, we declared February 2013 "Social Media Month" at the Society. Why you may ask? Well, for starters with our members hunkered down for tax season, February is an ideal time for staff education.
But the other, perhaps more important, reason is that social media is becoming an increasingly critical element in the NJSCPA’s marketing communications efforts, so it's important to educate staff about social media tools that support the
NJSCPA’s mission. While the Society is successfully involved in a number of social media platforms --
LinkedIn,
Twitter,
Facebook and
Connect just to name a few -- staff involvement is limited to a handful of people. Our primary goal was to encourage staff to explore social media sites either to promote the Society, better serve the members or just learn.
The social media training took place every Thursday in February for one hour. Some one-on-one training is also taking place for staff members who have questions about specific social media sites or need assistance getting started.
The social media platform causing the most consternation -- by far -- is Twitter. One impediment to adoption is definitely the
Twitter jargon. This dawned on Rachael and I about 15 minutes into our presentation as the blank faces of our staff stared back at us as we tried to explain what a
hashtag is.
Despite this obstacle, many of our colleagues nevertheless jumped into Twitter with both feet. As instructed, they set up their Twitter profiles with photos and brief bios, and began following others on Twitter, mostly other staff who had also just set up their Twitter profiles. As this occurred, another question emerged: Should I start tweeting or wait until I have more followers (or at least have followers outside of 425 Eagle Rock Avenue in Roseland)?
The answer to this "chicken or egg" scenario seemed obvious enough to Rachael and I -- start tweeting regardless of how many followers you have. After all, if a prospective follower visits your Twitter stream, you want them to see useful or interesting content, right?
But I could most definitely see the counter argument. Why tweet to no one? Sure, I could argue that through the use of handles and hashtags in your tweets the Twittersphere can be drawn to your tweets, but if someone's current followers numbers less than ten it's tough to convince them that their tweets are going anywhere but into the ether. And by following others that you know and who know you, someone new to Twitter could build up a decent following just through name recognition without sending so much as a "Hey, I'm on Twitter" tweet.
So which came first for you -- the tweets or the followers?
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