McElroy is Tweeting!
For all you Twitter fans out there, McElroy Translation is now tweeting! You can follow us at TranslationHub. For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is and are wondering what all the fuss is about, let us fill you in.
Twitter is yet another addition to the social media world around us. On most social media sites, when you sign in, you can say "What’s on your mind?" (Facebook), or tell your friends “What are you working on?” (LinkedIn). On Skype there is a bubble coming from your photo that says “Add video or write a message here for your friends to see.” If you were on Facebook now, you might see Susan Andrus is “up to her elbows in E-Buzz articles!” These quick little notes we make allow friends to keep up with us and comment back when what we are doing is something they can relate to or of a particular interest to them. Twitter strips away all the games, profiles, and miscellaneous information of other social media sites and allows us to keep in touch with others through snappy little blurbs alone. You can type up to 140 text characters and, with a click of a button, publish your micro-posting to your followers.
So how does that translate to the business world?
Instead of following your friends, you can follow your superiors, your peers, and your competitors. Find out what everyone else is doing and keep up with the latest trends in your industry. I’ve found one of the top reasons to use Twitter is keeping up with other professional marketers and designers. Collectively, we are far more collaborative than competitive. Because of this, networking is a huge part of our job. You can learn from each other and build enough of a relationship through this exchange to be able to carry on a conversation with some of the top people in your field when you find yourself face-to-face. Building a Twitter relationship can also open the door to being able to ask direct questions to your peers when you’ve hit a wall on your latest project and need experienced advice. Following peers works no matter what your specialty is!