Our Top Ten Twitter Triumphs

We were excited to be invited recently to take part in an event being run by Service Network, a North East network that aims to provide a stimulating environment for businesses in the region's service sector to learn, grow and prosper.

These aims really fit with our own, so we were pleased to take up their offer to speak at an event geared to supporting businesses to develop their digital footprint through using social media.  It was a great event, well attended (probably about 80 businesses there in all), and packed with social media know-how from brand agency Better and Flint Consulting.

So why was Space on Tap asked to speak, you may well ask!  Apparently because we had been recognised as a business that's positively incorporated social media into our marketing strategy.  Or, in other words, they'd noticed that we tweet a canny bit :)  

We were asked to focus our presentation towards how we'd gained profile for Space on Tap, an early stage start up business, through using Twitter.  When we started to pull together the presentation we even surprised ourselves at how much we'd actually achieved, so I thought I might share some of our Twitter successes with you.

OK, so here we go with our Top Ten Twitter Triumphs since we started tweeting in May/June 2010.

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1. We sent our very first tweet.  That might not sound like a triumph, but I can assure you that those 140 characters were painlessly crafted, changed about 20 times, and when the 'Tweet' button was clicked it felt like we'd arrived!

2.  We stuck with it.  We did get a lot of resistence from people around us in the beginning.  Being just the right side of 50 my peers weren't really social media types!  Understandably they saw the perils of socialising on  facebook more than the opportunities of promoting a business through twitter.  Our triumph is that we ignored the doubters and some of them are now our converts :)  

3.  The numbers.  We know that volume's often seen as vanity, but for us, at least at first, it was a numbers game.  We needed profile and that meant a large community.  As most of our community is in the North East and we connect with many of our followers offline as well as online we think it's now quality as much as quantity.  Anyway for interest's sake here are the numbers.  Over our 2 Twitter accounts @spaceontap and @colleaguesontap we have a total of 3,313 followers, mainly in the North East, we're featured on 85 lists and we've sent a total of 4,938 tweets.

4.  Brand Profile.  Space on Tap is a relatively early stage business, but through Twitter we've managed to secure a profile fairly quickly.  We often meet Twitter followers at exhibitions and events, and after only 6 months in business we were told by a follower that they thought we'd been around for at least a couple of years considering awareness of our brand.

5.  Added value for Customers.  Twitter is now embedded into our service offering - we're in the business of promoting space, so Twitter's added value to our space marketing strategy.

http://bit.ly/SpoTinTheGuardian

6.  Media Coverage.  We've had great media coverage, particularly for our Colleagues on Tap co-working days and our interest in co-working.    The Guardian described Colleagues on Tap as 'an innovative co-working project', and we've achieved significant exposure in column centimetre terms in other national and regional press from The Times to The Journal.  Although we've paid for PR in the past, and probably will in the future, on balance the impact of media finding us free through social media has far outweighed traditional paid-for methods.

7.  Trend awareness - listening.  Through Twitter we've listened, so we're increasingly understanding our marketplace.    As a result we've made changes in the business and those are ongoing.  Our interest and contribution to the co-working scene has been fed by an increased awareness of the co-working trend in the US and Europe through using social media; and our recent introduction of rented/leased space at www.spaceontap.com is as a direct result of joining the conversation on Twitter.

8.  Customer Feedback.  We've had some amazing feedback on Twitter, and as well as providing us a great feel good factor (it's good to know you're getting it right!) it's also given us the energy to keep going when times are tough!  Twitter is one of the most direct routes to listening to your customers and it's great to know that people are so generous with their comments and support for Space on Tap.

9.  Global connections.  Through Twitter and other social media, we've made connections, and had conversations, with people from as far afield as San Diego, Brussels and Prague.  This had fed our interest in bringing an international dimension to our work around co-working and developing support for the home business marketplace, and our decision to license Colleagues on Tap co-working days to help people with or without space, across the globe, to connect with homeworkers through running events through our Colleagues on Tap Associate Scheme.

10.  Adding to the team.  Last, but certainly not least, is what could be classed as our biggest triumph through Twitter.  Within 4 minutes of a tweet last year calling out for someone to help me to grow Space on Tap, I'd found Joanne, our trusty Operations Manager who has been with me ever since.  Twitter created a platform for us to connect, via a mutual follower (and Joanne's friend), and our story was then featured in Woman & Home magazine in a feature article about unique ways of finding a job, so more media profile thanks to Twitter :)

So that's it - our Top Ten Twitter Triumphs, so far ....  Through realising the impact we've had with Twitter,  we're now investing more time in extending our use of social media, and of course we're still learning all the time!

To finish, here's a quick video courtesy of Service Network with 3 top tips on using Twitter from yours truly, and if you want to know more about the who, what, where and how of Twitter from Space on Tap get in touch.