Twitter: Allowing Newbies to Connect with Experts

Kirsty Dunphey. Real estate dynamo. Entrepreneur. Speaker. Author. Self made multi-millionaire. Former Telstra National Young Business Woman of the Year.

Reader of my 5^th blog post ever. (Heart skips a beat). Generously offered to feature two of MY posts in HER newsletter. (Hysterically excited). Kirsty’s newsletter read by almost 10,000 followers. (PANIC. Is my writing good enough?)

Moving on from the rollercoaster of my reaction.

How did this come about? Was it luck? Partially.

The luck was being in the right place at the right time. That is, following Kirsty on Twitter and seeing her tweet about customer experiences in “Test for the taste”.

The second part was taking a leap of faith and replying to Kirsty with a link to my post “Laundromat with brain = customer loyalty”. From there, the chain of events was set in motion. It was a matter of seize the opportunity when it’s presented.

Why is Twitter so important in this?

Twitter enabled me to connect and have a conversation with Kirsty. Had I been in the same room as her the exchange wouldn’t have gone as smoothly. At the very least I would have needed to email the link by which point the conversation would have faded from memory. Assuming I’d had the confidence to approach her in the first place. By tweeting the link Kirsty could read the post immediately.

Having 140 characters meant we avoided the polite but no doubt long winded email from the new blogger to the expert. The informal setting also helped inspire confidence to approach Kirsty.

So what can you do?

As a new blogger use Twitter to build relationships with your readers and experts alike. Read and analyse the content produced by leaders in your field. If an opportunity arises to share your efforts take it. The worst that can happen is the person doesn’t respond. Wonderful results might occur too.

What opportunities has building relationships on Twitter provided to you?