My First Tweet

  With the recent IPO of Twitter in the news, I wanted to go back and see when I first became a user of Twitter. But first, a little history.
  According to Wikipedia, Twitter was created in March of 2006 and launched in July of the same year. It is now one of the 10 most visited sites on the Internet with over 500 million users in 2012.
  I first heard about Twitter when I attended a Net.Finance conference in New York City in October, 2008. As we discussed various social media tools, the facilitator talked about Twitter. Having no idea what this "micro blogging" site was all about, I went to Twitter.com and signed up. My first tweet was below:

kplynch: talking about Twitted 2008-10-02 19:48:18

  As you can see, I didn't even spell Twitter correctly. Not a very auspicious start. Needless to day, I've gotten pretty comfortable with it, using it both personally and professionally. For those of you that want to find out what your first Tweet was, go to My First Tweet, type in your user name, and you can see what your first tweet was. Hope it was more eventful then mine!



Getting Started on Twitter

I've had the opportunity to speak at numerous banking conferences on the topic of social media. In fact, I'll be attending the upcoming BAI Retail Delivery Conference in October. I am part of a panel discussion on "How Banks Are Using Social Media Analytics to Drive Product Development & Marketing" along with Aaron Chestnut from First Tennessee and Penny Crossman, Editor in Chief of Bank Technology News. If you happen to attend this event, please stop by and introduce yourself.

Anyway, on of the most common questions (usually after "How did you ever get Legal and Compliance to agree to this?") is how to get started, especially on Twitter. My usual response is that the person try it out individually first, then determine if it made sense for the organization. Unfortunately, that was about as far as my advice went, until now. I recently came across a site, twiends, that provides a an easy to follow process to get started on Twitter. If you are looking to take that first step, check it out. Good luck and feel free to follow me on Twitter: @kplynch.

Snow?! In Baltimore?! This weekend?!

On December 4th, we posted the following on Twitter: "1stMarinerBank: Snow?! In Baltimore?! This weekend?!"

In less than 5 minutes, we received the following message back: "@1stMarinerBank Snow in Baltimore? Not ready for that yet. Heading there next week and would love to meet you."

It was from a company called Geezeo, a provider of an online Personal Financial Management (PFM) product that they sell to financial institutions. Unbeknown to them (I think), we were ready to commit to this service with another, well established vendor in a matter of days. In fact, the contract was in our Legal area for review. The offering is considered to be the "Best in Class" in the industry, but it wasn't exactly what we wanted. So, while it didn't seem necessary, as a courtesy we agreed to meet since they had reached out to us through Twitter.

We met in our offices on December 10th. We were blown away. It was like they had designed exactly what we wanted- at a pricing model that made sense for us. By December 14th we received a proposal, negotiated a few terms, and had the final agreement from them on December 17th. Wow! Now that is the speed and power of social media.

What not to say on Twitter

The Financial Brand, one of my favorite banking sites, recently published it's top ten most popular stories during the year. One, in particular, caught my attention: "10 tweets you shouldn't send (and why)" from June, 2009. For the details, I suggest that you check out the actual post. Here, though, are the primary lessons I took from it.

• Focus on quality not quantity. People can tell the difference.


• If you have an offer, make it compelling. If you are sharing information, make it relevant and interesting.


• If it seems boring and mundane to you, it probably is. Don't send it.

Social Media Musings before the "Big Snow of '09"

As Baltimore prepares for a snow storm over the weekend (which means all the milk and bread will fly off the grocery store shelves), I thought I'd share my own experience with the social media space. Having participated in most of these areas (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) for a while now, it is always interesting to me how the online and offline worlds collide.

On Twitter, for example, I personally follow over 300 people and am followed by about the same number. Some of these people are friends/business associates, but the majority of them I've never met face to face. So last night, as I attended the Blue Sky Factory holiday party, my two worlds briefly came together. I got a chance to talk with Mario Armstrong, a tech entrepreneur in Baltimore and a guy I've heard on NPR and other local stations over the years. He often focuses on new technologies and manages to make some very complex subjects easy to understand. While I've enjoyed following him on Twitter, it was really nice to actually talk with him in person. And,we already had some connection.

So, what's the point? I guess it's that social media tools like Twitter really can help facilitate all kinds of conversations and relationships, both online and offline. Pretty neat when it all comes together that way.