I’ve been actively promoting our new reference guide that was created to answer the questions of the non-Twitter-using local business population. It was really eye-opening to hear your concerns.

While learning Twitter is not terribly difficult, most of us don’t learn perfectly or immediately. That’s O.K., but if you listen to some of the ‘guru-speak’ going on in the twitterverse, I can see how a person could be easily intimidated, walk away, and never look back. I hope we learn to lighten up pretty soon. No one has been elected Twitter President or been hailed a Twitter-god. There’s no Twitter Congress, just a bunch of tweeters that occasionally seat them selves on the Tweeter-guru Board to scare the bejesus out of newbies so they look more important somehow.

That approach doesn’t work for me. Bet it doesn’t work for you, either. If you’re not a dirty, rotten Twitter-scoundrel who deserves the backlash of distasteful comments doled out by those who sit on the imaginary ‘board,’ enjoy this post.

Using Twitter for local business marketing is just good sense. So is being human. One of the finest points of our reference guide is that it shows companies how the entire staff can use some aspect of Twitter to promote their company and build brand recognition. Some find that a scornful objective, believing that our opinion is just doggone backwards because we don’t spend a lot of time on the benefits of socialization.

But really, let’s get practical people. Get social when you can; work when you must.

Recently, I’ve been teaching my new assistant to schedule my tweets for me. She’s still learning to get my tone just the way I like, but her technique, while not perfect just yet, is absolutely helpful. I’ve been so busy lately that if it weren’t for her, tweeting would take way too much time because I’d have to dive into conversations and study information before I could interact. With her help, I can tweet useful things that need to get to people during hours when I couldn’t possibly be available. That makes it nice when I want to put my Tweetdeck up and interact. Much less brain-space abuse. I don’t think for ten seconds that tweeting in that manner cheats anyone. Matter of fact, I teach others how to do it!

• I get my message out
• I get my client’s messages out
• I can jump in when I want with less pressure to tweet ‘informatively’

Well, in a perfect world …

But our world isn’t perfect, is it?

Each of our social media clients has their own account in a social media manager, in this case we’ve used Social Oomph. It just so happens, that taking on too many different things at one time can be confusing. Like tweeting for several different companies at one time. Smell the disaster in the air?

Last week I was slightly bristled when I realized I had been tweeting plumbing information … like I was a plumber. Hmm …

It was even more humiliating when my plumbing account started tweeting about market research and SEO tools!

Before I knew it, I was opening up those accounts that had been scheduled, and deleting over and over again. It took a long time, but I finally quit sounding like I was selling plumbing services and more like I knew what I was doing in the online marketing world.

It made me realize that I hadn’t adequately warned you that this was possible to screw up!

Sometimes we’ve just got to make the mistakes that we need to avoid in the future. What did my daughter’s soccer coach always say? Oh yeah, “the more you lose early in the season, the more you win over time. It takes the losses to learn how to win.”

I just wanted you to know that if you ever get yourself in a public pickle, don’t freak out. Correct it and go about your business. You’ll be glad you stayed in the game.

Ever catch yourself in a twitstake? Tell us about it!

Here’s a list of posts I’ve written about other Twitter misadventures. You should feel pretty good about yourself when your done reading them!

6 Things I Hate About Social Media

It Could Happen to You: Vacation Twit-stakes