Is Twitter a useful resource for coaches, consultants or trainers?

I started using Twitter this summer (although confessed to have created an account months ago but never got round to doing anything with it!)

Twitter has opened up a whole new dimension that has many pros and cons for me.

Pros:

1. Able to follow and connect with people all over the world who I just would never have been able to access before
2. Improve my social networking efficiency & spend less time on each site – my tweets are connected to my facebook, ecademy and plaxo account so every time I tweet, these pages are updated automatically.  So whether you follow me on FB, ecad or plaxo, you can get my latest updates.
3. Updates my blog & websites – again every time I tweet, a little widget updates on my sites.
4. Gives you a great balance of showcasing your business & personality – allows you to show people the “real” you (but just don’t tweet about what you have for lunch every day – that’s dull! – unless you are a nutrition coach, that is!)
5. Gives another outlet for my blog RSS feed – I have set up my blogs to be feed directly in to my tweet feed automatically
6. Focuses my mind – when you only have 140 characters there is no space for blah, blah! (I am even starting to think in tweets – see cons!)
7. Twitter search – allows you to search for a particular key word/phrase and get twitter feeds to show you who is talking about your niche/interest and in what context (recommend you set up a search for your name & business name, too)
8. It’s free!

Cons:

1. It’s addictive! Be careful as it can take over your day and take you off your focus
2. Managing your twitter feed – it can be very overwhelming when you are following 100+ - so find a good twitter app that will help you track different people. TweetDeck is good & I also use twhirl.  There are others for Mac users.
3. It’s addictive!

There is a great blog and free ebook on offer for subscribers – www.twitterhandbook.com which I can thoroughly recommend for 1^st time users.

If you want to follow me – my twit name is @CanDoCanBe and drop me an email if I can be of any further help to anyone on twitter.

This post was originally written for a discussion on Eurocoach but I thought it was useful enough to share with you on blog.  Do add your comments below if you have any other pros and cons to share.  I would be very interested to read them. 

Comments

[Louise BJ]

Some good reasons to get tweeting here! I've just starting using no. 5 and love it. Have also found it useful to keep an eye on new trends, reports, offers etc. - obviously depending on who you're following.