Mark Shaw meets Kriss Akabusi through Twitter

Tues 2nd Feb 2010, I had the great pleasure to meet Kriss Akabusi.

Kriss is famous for his achievements in athletics where his greatest individual triumph was his Gold Medal in the 1990 European Championships when he also beat David Hemery’s 22 year old British Record.

He began his international athletic career in 1983 as a member of the 4×400 metre relay squad and will probably always be remembered for helping Britain clinch the Gold and beat the Americans in the World Championships 4×400 metre relay in Tokyo in 1991.

In 1992 as 3 x Olympic medallist, World, European and Commonwealth Champion Kriss was awarded the MBE by Her Majesty The Queen in her Birthday Honours List in recognition of his services to the country through athletics.

Kriss is currently the CEO of The Akabusi Company, a corporate communications and training company where his marvellous personality and reputation as a fantastic public speaker has made him a very popular and attractive advocate

So here am I meeting with a gold medal winning athlete, Top International speaker and MBE awarded person, how was all this possible? What had I done to get 1hours of Kriss’s valuable time?

All through Twitter

The answer is I found Kriss through a Tweet that I sent out approx 3 months ago. For those that follow me, every morning, I do a weather report from Barnet. That day was no difference, other than the fact, that Kriss was coming to Barnet that day, to play golf.

He saw my Tweet, and messaged me back.. Do I want to play golf? he asked.. Alas I said, I don’t play… it was from that moment, that we started communicating to each other… which eventually led to us having coffee at Starbucks in Barnet today.

It is also worth mentioning, that Kriss really knows how to utilise Twitter. He is great at sharing information, engaging, and being 100% personal…

Why am I telling you all this?

Twitter allows you to connect with people all over the world. But I connected with Kriss not because I was talking about business. I connected with him because I was being personal, interesting, humerous, social, and because I was then interested in hearing about other people as well.

Twitter allows you to tell us who you are, not just what you do

So as I stress to all my Twitter clients, the more you can engage with people, the more you can listen to people, the more you can be as personal as possible, the more people will gradually get to know like and trust you, and this may result in new collaborations, more sales, and/or more advocates for you…..