‘Twitter Means Business’: Ideas and inspiration
Last night I found myself rereading Julio Ojeda-Zapata’s “Twitter Means Business,” a book that does a damn good job of fulfilling the mission laid out in its subtitle, explaining “how microblogging can help or hurt your company.”
Yes, rereading. Not solely for the content, which in large part is a deeper dive into many of the corporate case studies we new-media pundits are often already somewhat familiar with, but for the inspiration.
I happen to know many of the very smart people who contributed to and who are quoted in Julio’s book (bragging: I happen to be one of them), and I remember watching many of these case study scenarios unfold in real life — not knowing they’d be business-book material a few months later.
Some of these people I know very well. Albert Maruggi, who contributed the book’s afterword, is a dear friend and former colleague who lives about eight blocks away from me. Others, I know in that familiar but distant “we’ve met on Twitter” sense. I remember when Jennifer Leggio, who wrote the book’s forward, was asking for help on Twitter while setting up her first WordPress blog.
I remember reading the first TechCrunch post about Comcast and its use of Twitter as a customer service tool the day it was published and thinking, Man, I really dislike Comcast, but that’s awesome. Julio’s “book praise” page is a damn who’s-who of people I’ve befriended, attended conferences with, twittered at and otherwise bumped into — digitally or in the flesh. Hell, even Julio himself is a friend of mine and a person whose work I’ve followed for years.
Something about that closeness to my life, that proximity to what I live and breathe everyday, takes Julio’s book far beyond the realm of ideas. We’re now squarely in the realm of pure inspiration.
Rereading this book, though I’m only a few pages in, inspires me to try harder. To continue to try to new things. To pay more attention to my friends and the things going on around me. To keep my head up and watch for new opportunities rather than keep my head down and plow away at the same old work in the same old way.
Thanks, Julio — and thanks to everyone else who made this book happen.
