Friday the 8th of April, I was invited to take part in a Twitter Takeover that had been organised by Vikki Ross.
It was a continuation of an International Women's Day project arranged by Vikki which encouraged copywriters with larger followings and networks to share their Twitter feed with a woman in their network with a smaller following, for a day to help them grow and extend their networks further. After the success of this Vikki announced she would be doing this on the 8th of every month and others within the community followed suit.
Chris Guiton (Wealden Wordsmith) a copywriter in my network contacted me and asked me if I would like to share his Twitter on the 8th as part of this project.
I was obviously really chuffed about this and said - Hell Yes!
I made some graphics for the day and thought about some tweets to share and I suppose what brought up the most interesting thoughts was the reflection "What do I want to say?" .
Shiiiit - what did I want to say?
This was interesting for me as often, I don't spend that long thinking about what I want to say at all , I already know what I'm passionate about and interested in and I want to tell EVERYONE, I enjoy entertaining people and making them smile, I want to tell people about how I can help with my doodle service, I like sharing my musings, I pop it into a doodle and write something I think feels interesting or helpful and go from there.
The responsibility of sharing someone else's twitter made me reflect a little more deeply on what I wanted to say. Not that I shared anything earth shattering, but I decided I wanted to leave people who didn't know me with the knowledge that I loved creativity and think it's important. Creativity is important to me, not just because I love doing creative things, but because I believe it makes us happier, nicer, kinder human beings when we let this part of ourselves out and indulge it. Happier, nicer, kinder human beings ,make for a more tolerant and hopeful world which we need right now. So yep, for me ,creativity is important.
Today my main takeaways from the takeover are as follows...
1 - It's easy to take for granted that I am able to say what I want and shoot it out into the world whenever I feel like it. How lucky are we!!????
2 - When I think about what I want to say, there is a lot I want to say that often doesn't get a look in- maybe slowing down a bit would help me say more. How would it feel to resist the pressure to just create and post off the top of my head?
3 - When people share their platform with you, that's pretty amazing. An introduction to new people with similar interests is a gift. Thinking about what to say was hard, as I wanted to say everything but Twitter doesn't let you do that. It was a good exercise in trying to clarify my thoughts.
4 - Likewise the lovely people in my network that already support and cheerlead me, it was a happy reminder in re-appreciating them and their time and what I'm putting into their eyes. They didn't leave me high and dry on my own like Billy no mates, they came and said hello - they said "Hey, you can sit with us!"
So I guess what I'm saying now is being part of the #TwitterTakeover was great, it did everything it was created to do, I met new people, I extended my network, I had chats, I couldn't just post and run away. I also had fun, I got to work collaboratively with Chris but most importantly it reminded me that pausing a bit more often to think about what I really want to say is a really positive thing to do.
Thank you Vikki for your fab project and thank you Chris for sharing your Twitter with me.