Admittedly, I was becoming a little disconnected with the #YZF Twitter community, since I left Yellowknife a year and a half ago, but since deciding to move back I’m amazed at what I’m finding.
I’m quite impressed by the amount of users Yellowknife has on Twitter, and many from different walks of life. There are Government employees on the Territorial level and more and more from the municipal level now as well. Many of the journalists, editors and radio hosts are also using Twitter regularly. Plus an abundance of other folks, including a lot of the creatives in Yellowknife.
Most, if not all the New Sources in Yellowknife are also attempting to use Twitter. They are at least piping their news stories into Twitter, props to some of CBC’s reporters that live tweet #NWTpoli. That is always nice to follow.
The one front that is slowly coming along is the businesses. I have seen many of Yellowknife’s business join Twitter, tweet once or twice and then stop. For me that is hard to watch. I want to see them on the platform, because it is such an easy way to communicate with the community.
One of the major issues with Twitter in the north is still whether or not there is value in it for a business. Is it worth the time? Is there an ROI? From my perspective, one of the biggest hang-ups is the fact that Twitter along with other Social Networks are free, but many fail to use them correctly. I spend most of my time figuring out how a person or a business can use these services to their advantage and properly, but again many fail to realize the value in spending the money learning a new medium. Eventually one day, with a bit of encouragement we’ll get there.
Getting away from the deep marketing jibber-jabber, lets talk about tweetups. The social gathering of those on twitter; an excuse to meet in real life (irl). I use to help organize them back in the day, but there has been many since I left YK. Lets change that please. I’m going to get settled, but once I am, I want to host a 2012 #yzftweetup.
There are a lot of people I don’t know on Twitter in Yellowknife now, like I said. I think it would be fun to meet and network. Who is with me?
I am!