Remember the old movie, “The Naked City”?  When I say old, I mean 1948, black and white, film noir old. Sort of like me.

There’s a great and memorable quote from the movie, a line spoken by its narrator : “There are eight million stories in the Naked City; this has been one of them.”

Now, let’s speed ahead to the present, and the Internet, and social media, and the so many ways in which we communicate today online.  Specifically, Twitter.  And . . .

“There are eight million stories in the world of social media, and this is one of them.”

I opened a Twitter account months ago, sat on the sidelines for a while simply observing.  I saw no value to running up the “followers” numbers, or to “following” thousands.  While I can multi-task, I also like to pay attention to those with whom I communicate, and there was just too much fluff and useless drivel, and re-tweeting, and tweet-spam and all other manner of unsubstantiality.

So, I watched, and found a few fellow travelers who seemed to have something to say worth listening to, and followed them.  A few even seemed to find what I had to say interesting enough to follow me, too.

One such fellow traveler is Gunther Sonnenfeld.  We’ve become sort of friends, or at least fans of each other, and we’ve chatted occasionally through direct messages.  I’ve read much of what he writes online, a very smart guy, and I’ve learned a lot from him.

One of KISS’s clients, Onset Computer Corporation, a giant in the world of data logging equipment, and the owner of the HOBO brand of data logging “stuff,” was in the market for services I know Gunther offers.  Brock Phillips, our Onset man on the scene, asked if I knew anyone who could help him take the pulse and temperature of Onset’s market and clientèle.

I reached out to Gunther, and as a consequence, we had our first actual, real, honest to goodness, personal contact – - over the telephone. Although it was our first phone contact with each other, there was no need for awkward introductions or pregnant pauses in the chat, and we got right to business.

Social media, Twitter to be precise, had made us aware of each other.  We’d already had the opportunity to review each other’s work, and speaking for myself, at least, I found his of great value and worth.  It was a natural for me to offer the introduction, Brock to Gunther and vice versa.

They’re speaking this week about a project together, and my hope is some commerce gets done.  It would make a terrific story to add to the “eight million” of them out there.

Social media networks have great value if they are used properly, a great vehicle for presenting oneself.  Gunther will tell you that . . . after all, that’s one of his niches, social media marketing. Check it out on his site:  ThinkState

The moral of the story?  Make sure you have a social media marketing strategy in place, and then work it.   It’s helped KISS – we found a resource for our client, Onset Computer Corporation; and we found a prospect for our friend, Think State’s Gunther Sonnenfeld.