“Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar.
You’re gonna go far, you’re gonna fly high,
You’re never gonna die, you’re gonna make it if you try; they’re gonna love you.
Well I’ve always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely.
The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think.
Oh by the way, which one’s Pink? –Pink Floyd’s Have a Cigar

Scott Stratten, a Tweeter with a huge following (a.k.a. @unmarketing) put out a simple tweet a couple of months ago that has stuck with me ever since. Because it was on Twitter, I will not be able to find it and directly quote it, however the jist of it was that his Twitter fame didn’t give him enough clout to jump the cue for coffee at Williams Pub.

I have never met Scott Stratten in real life, although if this counts, I have many people I interact with on Twitter who have. I think he is in an enviable position, with a very high profile, even if he can’t use his fame to get front of the line service. He’s just about to go on a book tour. Not bad.

I have now been on Twitter for six months. When I first joined, I didn’t think that I would spend much time on it. After all, I was part of the first wave of LinkedIn users in Canada (going back nearly six years) and had built a very comfortable network and routine through that form of social media. I have found tons of important uses for it from research for client projects and connections for business development to expanding who sees the jobs that form part of the EO list.

Now that I am on Twitter however, I’m hooked, but for entirely different reasons. Although I have clearly come to understand the value of following and encouraging the followership of a broad list of people on Twitter, at the same time, I have strongly focused on building new contacts across the globe who are HR Professionals.

Simply stated, I have learned a lot about the power of Twitter over the past six months. One of the most interesting things I have found is that the U.S. HR business market is far more robust on Twitter than it is in Canada. With the exception of a handful of HR Tweeps I have found in Canada, the Canadian chatter is pretty sparse. Some of the regulars include @HRstalker, @RyanAndersonHR, @staffingmatters, @tomfromhr, etc.

One of the best parts of reading incoming Tweets is learning about all the various HR Blogs. There are so many good ones. If you’d like to know which ones I follow, click on my blogroll.

Recently, one of my favourite Twitter contacts, @jkjhr (a.k.a. John Jorgensen) started a new blog. It is at hrtailgate.wordpress.com. I suspect this blog will be a hit. After all, John J. is like my identical twin separated at birth. He is from Illinois, a loyal Hawkeye, teaches HR Management, does consulting work, and leads an HR Chapter. The only thing that seems different is that we currently live in different countries. You couldn’t imagine my surprise when I found him on Twitter.

When I asked him why he decided to create the blog, he indicated in fun that it had something to do with peer pressure. Notice he didn’t say, “for the glamour”!

Blogs are not glamorous work. It takes a lot of time to maintain a blog. The most difficult part is coming up with subject matter that you won’t later regret posting. The other difficult part is positioning it for the right audience.

I suppose there are those social media stars who have figured out how to make a boatload of money using social media. For the HR folks I have met who write blogs, it seems to be for the hope that they can reach a small narrow market in a meaningful way. And, maybe among this group they’ll be allowed to “have a cigar” for achieving a respectable click list.

p.s. did I mention a great tweep @CigarSPHR? And his name isn’t Pink.