#CommanderInTweet

“Murray, do you have a minute?”

“Sure Brad… nice socks…. um… what’s up?”

“Well, is it okay if I sit down?”

“Sure. Close the door if you want to. This looks to be pretty important”

“It is.”

“Okay”

“It’s about ‘tweeting’.”

“I don’t tweet.”

“I know that. THAT’s the problem!”

“Really?”

“Yes. You see, in order to be seen as a Thought Leader in the software community, you really need to ‘tweet’. It’s powerful communication platform. A single tweet can now move the stock market, inflame a nation, or drive #Bieber fans to despair because of his new haircut. I really think you need to add it to your arsenal as a Thought Leader”.

“Well, you know Brad, I have been doing a lot of work on my Thought Leadership – practicing levitating in my office, developed a commission based system for an entire thought leadership department, and I have been in discussions with someone from the Support department to become one of my muses!”

“One of your muses?”

“Yes – you know a muse – someone who will listen to you in a non-judgmental way, just go with your random thoughts and bounce back great ideas. It’s like the first 3-months of dating before the reality of life descends on the relationship”

“But I would have thought that ‘musing’ would have been a marketing department function.”

“Hey, hey Brad. No need to be territorial about this. The Support group is full of good listeners. The marketing people are always coming up with these wild ideas and not listening quite as much. So tell me why I should tweet about trucking software or freight brokerage software?”

“Well, as your tweeting grows you start to create a following. You get all these followers and they start looking at what you’re tweeting. It then becomes an effective tool to communicate with all the stakeholders of Tailwind Transportation Software. They get the latest updates and changes on our business.”

“On trucking and freight broker software? How bored are they?”

“Some are keenly interested.”

“Wow, I am not sure I totally understand Twitter though – the 140 character limitation and the hash tag thingies”

“Well – the #hashtags are the mechanism whereby others who want to respond to your tweet can also tweet. And the 140 character limit means you have to distill your comments down to the most important elements.”

“Hmm. Well that is crazy – I use over 140 characters in just my opening sentence for my blogs. What happened to creating a well considered argument, composing one’s thoughts, even telling a great story. Everyone likes those things don’t they, Brad?”

“Well…um… well… um…”

“Oh, I get it Brad. I g-e-e-t it now, Brad. So you feel that people are tired of my long and verbose blogs – blogs that expound on all sorts of things in the name of trucking software with no clear direction – leaving them trying to figure out how this all comes together. They probably think I am like some long haul truck driver with a ‘less-than-full-truckload’ wandering around the nation’s highways without the benefit of a good GPS system. Is that it, Brad? Is that how they think Brad? Is that how they all feel, Brad? Is that the REAL reason you came to visit me this morning?”

“Um… um… ah… ah… how do you like my new socks?”

“I like them – those red and blue swirls really work.’”