Are you an SME? Do you use Twitter? Have you got a central nervous system?

Then don't, whatever you do, pay any attention to the 'SME Masterclass' that went up on the Telegraph the other day.

Because it gets Twitter completely wrong.

OK, it doesn't get all of it wrong. The law of averages stopped that.

But it does get the two most important bits of Twitter wrong.Here's the first:

Huh?

Any SME owner knows that business and pleasure, business and personality, business and
, are inextricably linked.

People who say otherwise have learnt everything they know about business from a book.

Human, all too human

I'm a customer and client and the people and business ownersI've been drawn to, and whose services I have purchased on Twitter, are the ones who show they are human.

They might melt down in full public view, say something they probably shouldn't, tweet pics from their everyday family lives...

OK, OK. The point I'm trying to make is that, on Twitter,people and business owners want to see that the businesses they are following are made up of real people leading real, everyday lives.

Because people, as any SME will know, buy people.

Wrong bit number 2

OK, so here's the second bit that's wrong in the article.

Aside from the fact that we're now told Twitter is 'a great way of getting the personality of your business across', which contradicts everything said in the first screen grab, saying that you should never use Twitter to directly promote your products or services is plainwrong.

You absolutely, 100%
do so all the time.

People who 'get' Twitter, know that. People who don't, don't.

Help not hate

People won't hate you for directly promoting your business, either. Quite the opposite, in fact.

When you're promoting your product or service on Twitter, the community you build around you will often retweet those 'salesier' tweets because they want to do you a favour.

And you, of course, do the same for them. If it helps someone you have a laugh with on Twitter get some new business, then great.

You see, whatever the social media purists and self-appointed 'SME experts' say, the SME community knows that while we're all having a good time on Twitter, we also all have businesses to run and vet bills to pay.

So we retweet our friends' salesier tweets, do them introductions to possible new clients and customers, and say speak to so and so.

In short we
them for trying to earn a crust.

Get the balance right

As with all areas of life, with Twitter it's about getting the balance right.

You'll either instinctively understand it, or you won't, in which case you should consider writing articles about Twitter for a living.




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