All the world’s a stage, which means Twitter is a stage too, a stage that is new to me, and new to most of us. I’ve been told that I need to tweet for marketing purposes. That I should talk about what I’m doing in my business.
But I’m in conflict. Tweeting feels phoney to me. I have a hugely complicated relationship with what I feel is my hugely complicated job running a public speaking and presenting consultancy. I often feel overwhelmed, understaffed, and out of control.
Then I step onto the Twitter Stage, and I have 140 characters to market myself and my company, to capture a moment, and then another, and another and another, in order tell a story that makes me look good. It feels one-sided to talk only about the good stuff. What about the rotten stuff? The client that postponed the big engagement. The client who bargained me down to the nub. The brochure that can’t seem to get itself to the printer.
Everyone’s trying to make themselves look good. How refreshing, I think to myself, to actually be honest and talk about the bad stuff. But then I argue with myself that being negative is not positive. I think maybe I should follow the advice of my marketing guru, and paint a picture of Sims Wyeth & Co. as a fabulously successful company. Dish out little bits of information that will make the competition jealous.
I think my conflict about Twitter comes from the medium itself. It’s strobe-lit story-telling…in slow motion, like submitting to a publishing house every tenth page of a novel you’ve written.
Or better, when I’m on the Twitter Stage, I feel like an actor who has been working on his lines backstage behind a curtain, and yet just beyond the curtain is a large audience waiting to catch a glimpse of me.
When I’m ready, I signal to the stage manager. He nods, counts down from five, and lifts the curtain. I feel the heat of the spot light. I sense the audience out there in the dark. I open my mouth to speak my lines in my most positive tone of voice. I make the gestures I’ve rehearsed. I try to end with a dramatic flourish before the spotlight goes dark–careful not to go over the time limit. And then it’s dark. The spot light is off. The stage manager lowers the curtain.
The audience does not respond or applaud, but I feel that I have surgically implanted an image and a thought into their minds. I have sent them a little snapshot of myself and my business in the hope that it will be interesting or helpful.
And then I return to my work backstage: blogging, selling, researching, developing new products, until the thought occurs that I must step onto the Twitter Stage again, to create another strobe-lit pose that will dovetail with the narrative flow I weave for world.