Do you have time for coffee?

A different way to think about, and make time for, Twitter & Facebook

Recently my Pilates instructor mentioned that she’s looking for an admin assistant, in part to do Facebook for the centre. In this conversation I heard two thoughts commonly expressed about Facebook and Twitter:

1. “I just don’t have time for all that.”
2. “Facebook is like another kind of email.” (By which she meant, a means to broadcast messages to her clients.)

I believe there is a more effective way to think of these things we broadly call “social media”.

Twitter & Facebook are neighbourhood coffee shops*

Imagine that the stream of your friend’s status updates are like conversations in a coffee shop, going on all around you. Some of them are interesting, so you listen in. You might even join in. Other conversations you’ll ignore entirely, and that’s okay. You don’t have to keep up with it all.

Just as in real-life coffee-shops, these conversations allow you to keep up with the local pulse, maybe learn something, make connections. Sometimes these conversations lead to action. This action can be of many kinds: social, activist, and dare I say it, commercial.

Imagine you’re at the coffee shop and you just happen to need a new hairdresser/web designer/carpenter. Coincidentally you meet one there, or hear glowing praise of one and voila, your job of sifting through the zillion possibilities in Google just got easier. Or if you are a carpenter, taking a break at your regular coffee shop? Great, you might have a new gig because the barista made an introduction or recommendation.

Can’t imagine this type of connection happening through social media? Think again. I personally have met clients “out of the blue” because they found me in my facebook neighbourhood, and have secured a number of projects because I strengthened otherwise loose ties while hanging out on Twitter. Will that be true for everyone? Of course not. But depending on your business and client demographic, some kind of social media effort is bound to pay off somehow.

*This isn’t a new metaphor -  in Twitter Demystified & Debunked Havi Brooks calls it your neighbourhood bar/cafe hang-out. I find most bars annoying, and I think cafes have more of a likelihood of business taking place, so I prefer to think of it as a cafe.

**Those tweets are from @CharlieGilkey of Productive Flourishing // @kimianak, blogger, food lover, writer’s agent, Quebecer // @HiroBoga, intuitive healer // @rebecca_leigh, Brisbane copywriter

You make time for coffee breaks, right?

So here’s the thing. You don’t have to make a ton of time for this, or do these things all day. You could just drop in to Twitter or Facebook while you’re having your break or your morning coffee. In 15 focused minutes a day you can make some of those cool connections or build upon ones you already have.

Really? 15 minutes?

I’m the first to admit that these things can be a real time-suck. But I also think that 15 focused minutes would be better than just not doing it at all. The challenge is first: getting the hang of it all if you haven’t already, and then, keeping the time limited. Especially on Twitter I find there is an endless stream of distractions interesting-ness to tempt you.

I’ll follow this up with some resources and tips on getting the hang of and making the most of it. Meanwhile, it’s coffee talk time. Talk away below. What do you think about all this? What are your tips, questions, experiences…?

P.S.  The image above used “coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee….” as a source. Flickr has such great coffee images. Over on my personal blog I posted some of the coffee images I considered using before making my own.