Why Twitter Is Like The Pub!

03/05/2012

By Louise Findlay-Wilson, Creator Of PrPro And Owner Of Energy PR

In a recent talk I used the analogy of a pub in order to show the audience how to use twitter. I’m not sure whether the room was simply packed with alcoholics but the comparison seemed to resonate with people! So I thought I’d share the thinking here.

When you first go to an unfamiliar pub you don’t know anyone. You sit in the corner with a book or newspaper and try not to look like ‘Billy No Mates’ or perhaps you sit at the bar and swap a few words...

...with the bar staff. Either way you listen to a few conversations going on around you, but you don’t feel able to join in – after all you don’t know anyone and they don’t know you. If you only return to this pub once a month you struggle to ever get beyond this point of unfamiliarity.

Twitter is a bit like that. If you only go on twitter once in a while, no one gets to know you. You struggle to make an impression, garner connections or have conversations. Like the pub, it is only by visiting and contributing to twitter regularly that people understand what you’re about. You can’t simply steam in and just start talking about yourself, after all who’s meant to listen to that? If you do, everyone will switch off. You will be twitter’s equivalent of the pub bore! Sure there are some people who talk loudly about themselves in pubs and never listen to others, but if they are regulars they are at best tolerated by the rest of the pub...they rarely garner fans. On twitter such crashing bores are simply ignored. Those using twitter to simply broadcast their stuff may be doing... continued on page two >

 

 

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