The parallel universe of twitter

Succulent garden on the roof deck. Covet.

Spent the morning at the Twitter for small biz workshop (#smallgoesbig) in their downtown San Francisco headquarters. Even though i'm not a for-profit business with holiday sales to drive, i just started really tweeting in earnest oh, last week, so i thought i could use all of the help i can get. 

The whole experience was like a step into the other side of this fabled tech world we hear about. Free breakfast at this free event, with coffee and a fridge full of beverages (coconut water, yum!) heaping bowls of fresh fruit and yogurt, pastries. An incredible roof deck with a succulent garden that is just plain art. And a big ole cafe that i considered sneaking into when i went to the bathroom but a security eventually called me back upstairs. 

I met a bunch of people from hootsuite, a woman who bought a bookstore in north berkeley called Bookish, a guy running the San Francisco Tea Festival, a woman who wants to do growth/expansion in texh startups, and an acquaintance from theexpatwoman --so that was fun. Talks were peppered with acronyms like CTA (call to action), CLA (cost per lead), ROI (return on investment), and lingo like lead gen (eration), and conversion (wha?). All the presenters looked under the age of 32, and there were 2 independent mentions of Sightglass coffee (#who'sthehipsterestofthemall). It reminded me that I actually really like meeting new people! 

The view from HQ.

At two breakout sessions I learned about twitter "cards" which are just photos with a headline and a call to action that you can attach to a tweet (free to use!) and apparently generate 43% more "engagement" than text alone. You can also do lead generation cards, which gives you the contact info of a user when they click on it. 

However, I just tried to sign up for Twitter ads, which you have to do to create a card, and I can't because my account is "ineligible." I can only take that to mean that I am too small potatoes. Which is true, but that's why I want to use the cards! Not cool, Twitter. 

The dude from Square, mid sentence.

I also sat in on a talk from Square, the credit card payment company... Which could possibly come in handy some day. If you want to give me money using a credit card, I can now accept it!

What was most useful to me was the basic stuff that was mentioned almost in passing --personal engagement with followers should be 80% of your tweets. 80% of twitter access is mobile, so your site better be mobile friendly (mine isn't, argh!), follow hashtags to get involved in conversations (duh! Hadn't really thought of that. Lord i am old). There is more traffic on weekends so be sure to tweet then.

What a bubble. One of the presenters actually said, "there are 250 million users, so  your audience is on Twitter. It is." And I am thinking well, there is AN audience, sure, but with 7 billion people on the planet there are still a lot of people who aren't on Twitter. So lets keep it in perspective.

Overall though, it was an informative day, and I have learned a bunch of ways to step up my game. Thanks for breakfast, Twitter! 

Twitter's cafeteria. Maybe one of many, for all I know.