Well, perhaps not changed my life, but she certainly made my day. Yesterday I ran a workshop on Twitter at BHT Sussex for a number of members of staff. We looked at who were effective tweeters, what made someone interesting, and why some people had greater authority on Twitter than others.
We looked at an individual’s reputation, and the relevance of one’s position in an organisation, how long a person had been in role, their knowledge base, how interesting their opinions were, and their personal conduct. We analysed how influential different individuals in BHT were on Twitter. I, for example, have the advantage of being the CEO and the credibility that brings, whether or not I personally merit it. Having worked for BHT for 27 years also brings some credibility, regardless of whether I have learned anything useful in that time or have anything interesting to say.
Towards the end of this very worthy discussion, I needed to illustrate something about Twitter and this blog. I then noticed that in the previous hour I had had twice as many hits on the blog than I would normally have in a week! Was it that I had said something particularly interesting, profound or controversial? Nothing like that. Earlier in the day I had posted my reaction to the speech by David Cameron in which he proposed that those under 25 should not be entitled to housing benefit.
It was a fairly straightforward post but the Twitter link to that post had been retweeted by one of the great Tweeters of our time, the incomparable @SallyBercow. Her simple, and generous tweet read “Good blog on the disgraceful Cameron housing benefit proposal >> RT @AndyWinterBHT: http://wp.me/pDTWu-iA“. This recommendation resulted in many dozen retweets and a huge volume of traffic to the blog.
The moral of the story is that it doesn’t really matter how influential a small time tweeter and blogger like me tries to be, all it takes is one recommendation from the likes of Sally Bercow to changed your life or, rather, make your day!
