Dear Aunty B,
We rely on Twitter for a lot of marketing and my boss refuses to have anything to do with it. He is really high profile and if he tweeted it would be great for the business. But he is old and hopeless with computers. How do I get him tweeting?
The hard working marketing manager,
Melbourne
Dear hard working marketing manager,
Do you know how embarrassing it is to be over 50 and hopeless at computers?
Do you know how awkward it is to have grown up when computers were the size of small rocket ships and carrying a mobile put your back out?
So walk in his shoes for a sec. He is scared of change, has no e-instincts and too many demands on his time. So you deal with these things separately.
First, you find the teacher. And it mightn’t be you. He needs to know that he is not going to be mocked every day for being a techno-twit. So pick someone who is young, discreet and really nice. Tell him they have been appointed as his special IT person to help him with all IT needs. Then instruct that person how to help him. This means going in every two days and showing him how to do something new and reminding him how to do something you showed him two days ago.
And instruct that person to get him on Twitter and Facebook. The way to do that is promise him it will help the company and take up barely any time at all. He just has to tweet twice a day. And show him how to do it a number of times until it becomes a habit. I promise you this: once he gets the hang of it he will be a regular.
Be smart,
Your Aunty B
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
