Journal

5 Ways to Ruin a Perfectly Good Twitter Relationship

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I find Twitter to be one of the best social media tools around. The fact that it only allows you 140 characters to get a message across usually means that there’s no waffle.

People genuinely think about what they want to say, and it’s a great way to connect with people you share interests with, personal and professional.

Yet lately I’ve been getting a little frustrated with Twitter – not the service itself (although the fail whale is never a pretty site). No, my frustrations lie with the way many users are spoiling what Twitter has to offer – at least for me.

I know that people use Twitter for different reasons and I have no qualms with that at all. I just feel that some use it less effectively and far more selfishly than others. So here, in no particular order, are my Top 5 peeves when it comes to Twitter use. (These are just my peeves – it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right – Twitter should be used how you want to use it).

Shameless self-promotion. Yes, we’re only human and that means we like to talk about ourselves. Yet social media is all about the conversation and interacting – sharing others as well as yourself. There’s nothing more annoying to me than a Twitter stream from someone that is nothing but a plug for their latest blog post or product. To me, that doesn’t offer anything to the community – sorry.

Selfish shouts. One of the reasons I love using Twitter is the way I find great new content, thanks to users I’m following recommending new blogs to check out. This has introduced some great opinions to me that I would never have been aware of otherwise. However, only recommending blog posts where you’re mentioned? Just as bad as shameless self-promotion (and possibly a little egotistical).

Twitter DM spam. So I’ve just agreed to follow your Twitter updates, and BAM! All of a sudden you feel it’s acceptable to send me direct messages telling me to sign up to your newsletter or join this group or that forum. Sorry, no – show me that you’re offering something selflessly and I’ll find that information anyway. Bombarding me with DM’s is akin to email spam and I instantly delete that.

Open conversations. This might be a bit contentious and I apologize if it comes across wrong – that’s not my intent. But if you feel that you’re going to have a long conversation with a particular user, can you use the DM option? Seeing half a conversation taking up every other Tweet isn’t particularly conducive to community spirit. You wouldn’t like me listening in on your phone conversation, would you?

Competition Tweets. While it’s nice to have the chance to win something at any time, Tweeting about it every other minute is not a great way to go about it. Instead of blasting everyone in your Twitter stream, why not have the competition URL and short spiel about it in your bio?

I’m not saying that Twitter is becoming annoying per se – just some of the ways that it’s being used.

Of course, maybe I’m missing the boat altogether and it’s me that’s in the wrong and the above points are moot. I’d love to hear your opinion, and if there are any other Twitterisms that annoy you.

Discussing Social Media with… Adam Gainer

A little while back, I sent out a request via Twitter asking if anyone would be interested in being interviewed for a discussion on social media. With the medium meaning so many different things to so many people, as well as how it can be used, I was interested to hear the views of the people I connect with.

My original plan was to run a ?round table? style of blog post – raise the questions and then have a mix of views as the responses. However, the answers I received back were all excellent, and showed why social media is the mix of interesting people and views that it is. So, I decided individual posts would be far more effective in an on-going series of interviews.

Sharing his views today is Adam Gainer, a Public Relations intern at Subudhi Consulting Group, a boutique PR agency in Richmond, VA. My sincere thanks to Adam for taking the time to reply and share his views. To connect with Adam, or find out more about him, please visit his blog Trying to Keep Up With an Ever-Changing World.

If someone was to ask you for your definition of social media, what would it be?

A mix of online tools for people of like interests to share information and collaborate on ideas.

What is your reason for using social media?

I use social media to share things I find interesting with my friends. It also helps me as I try and keep abreast of items and ideas in my field and try to keep ahead of the herd.

Do you feel that social media is being used to its maximum effect?

I feel that a lot of people are using it for its maximum effect to branch out to people they might have never met.

What social media tools or applications do you use? Why these ones in particular?

I use Twitter to find out what people in my field are doing, as well as let people know when I update my blog and what I’m working on or when I need ideas. I use Facebook to keep up and share things with friends, professors and colleagues. I use AIM to keep in contact with friends and family. Digg and delicious to find new interesting articles. I run a blog to try and help people looking to intern in my field see what they have ahead of them.

Where do you see the future of social media, both in general and for you?

I see social media being used for marketing as well as public relations to read direct niche markets with people who share common interests. Today is just becoming more and more media saturated and a lot of people are hungry for information. It will also be used by companies for them to be able to collaborate on projects from afar. For me I hope to use it to try and promote myself and help the right job find me.

Are businesses effectively using social media? If not, what can they do to improve?

I do believe that some businesses are. A lot are starting to get into twitter and blogging which is good because it helps them to communicate on a more personal level and get feedback from their customer base. The ones that do not are really missing out on an opportunity to find out what their customers and audiences think of them – this leaves them unable to influence perceptions.

What do you feel are the best and worst features/uses of social media?

I love how it’s instantaneous feedback and response. There is a lot of personality and interaction in different communities. The only drawback is that it’s 24/7 and you can’t always be monitoring it or you will drive yourself insane. Another aspect is while you can share a lot of information about yourself there is the constant fear of someone posting something you don’t like about you and it damaging your reputation.

You can find more ?Discussing Social Media with?? interviews here.

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There’s No I in Social Media

Well, okay, there are two – yet “There Are Two I’s in Social Media” didn’t sound quite as catchy as a title. Besides, I always wanted to try and work the Team America “There is no I in Team America” joke into a blog post – so there you go.

But apart from my lame attempt at humor, there’s another reason for the title of this post. For anyone that’s ever listened to corporate team-building speak, they’ll have heard a similar phrase before. It may even have been something as simple as, “There is no I in team.” While we all may have rolled our eyes and groaned at the time, it turns out it’s actually a pretty smart phrase – especially in social media.

Look around you on the web – if you’re part of a social media website or network, I’d be fairly confident on laying a bet that it feels like you’re on the world’s best team.

Take a look at Twitter, for example. You have a problem, you send out a Tweet and immediately you have the ears and eyes of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Each and every one of them will look at your problem and if they can help, they will.

Or how about BackType, or Disqus? Two similar methods of tracking blog comments that are helping to pave the way at improving the quality of comments left on blogs. Encouraging ways to make people think and comment respectably, as opposed to leaving the “WaReZ RuLeZ” type of gibberish. Building a better community.

This is where social media is leading the way at changing the way we look at the people and world around us. We’re no longer saying we’re only in it for what we can get out of it – now we’re saying to people we’re here for you. If you have a problem, one of us will have the answer and we’ll help you – because we want to help you be the best you can. And in doing so, making ourselves better people.

It’s strange. I look at Barack Obama and I see him as the true social media guru. Not for the way his team used social media to get the word out about his campaign, and not for the way he embraced the medium when millions of others still see it as immaterial.

No, where I see Obama standing as a focal point for social media is that he wants everyone to believe we can.

We can achieve our dreams.

We can overcome obstacles.

We can become one voice reaching for a better world.

We can do all this and more if we simply listen to each other. And respond. And help.

Sound familiar?

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Discussing Social Media with… Keren Dagan

Sharing his views today is Keren Dagan, Director of Engineering at Unica, a software company specializing in marketing automation. My sincere thanks to Keren for taking the time to reply and share his views. To connect with Keren, or find out more about him, please visit his blog Webnomena.

If someone was to ask you for your definition of social media, what would it be?

I define social media by the Twitter model not the specific application. Everyone adds from their own to one big pile of content and news without forced context or agenda. Participants can choose to just sit and listen, to monologue about their life or to converse with others. Participants can start new discussions, share, react, complain, educate, and converse. Existing members bring and introduce new participants, expanding the pool of content.

The social crowd coronate influencers due to their communication, leadership and entertaining (fun) skills. Yet, the most notable characteristics of social media are generosity, authenticity and openness. Anyone can try and you don’t have to look good to succeed, yet most of the social media celebrities are working incredibly hard – maybe even harder than if they were working in traditional media.

What is your reason for using social media?

Honestly, I don’t know and I’m not yet sure where it is all leading me. A close relative inspired me into blogging and Twitter almost exactly a year ago. I knew nothing about this media but I think that I covered a lot of ground during the past year. I love to explore new applications and technologies. I’m very curious about performance; scalability, search, monitoring and discovery techniques, and I usually read and write about those.

Professionally, I can see how much of these activities helped me with my work.? This year I introduce new development technologies and methods for building better and modern applications. It doesn’t come without effort, though – I blog late at night and I read a ton online every minute that I can.

Yet, I have to admit that I’m hooked to the interaction: getting blog comments, a tweet (@ and making new friends, fans or followers. Getting a vote of confidence like Digg, Delicious saves or StumbleUpon review is too exciting and fun to stop, and makes the effort worthwhile.

Do you feel that social media is being used to its maximum effect?

I think that lots of information is falling between the cracks of multiple social media applications and activities. I see opportunities for social graph aware applications bridging these gaps. The value: catalyzing building new relationships. I wrote about it here.

It is hard for people that are not computer savvy to discover how others react to their social media activities. If we want to see the social media going mainstream this kind of information should be constantly available and without an effort.

What social media tools or applications do you use? Why these ones in particular?

Twitter for my micro-blog, web presence, keeping in touch with the community and the million other things that one could do with this platform. WordPress for my blog. Twitter Search, Twellow, TwitScoop (through TweetDeck), Backtype, Google Alerts, and FriendFeed for listening to the web.

Delicious and Delver for smart searches. Twine – organized bookmarks – building knowledge bases. GoogleReader, Netvibe and iGoogle for feeds. Twhirl and TweetDeck – Twitter desktop clients ? since each has its own advantages; I?m just waiting to see a winner.

Facebook (friends) and LinkedIn (professionals) – for scalable and dynamic contact management. Technorati, Google Analytics, Alexa, PostRank (aka AideRSS), Compete – for ego measures. I also use Technorati, Twitter and Google Chart APIs for my little BlogMon mashup for keeping track of bloggers? progress. Google Docs – for sharing results from BlogMon and writing/sharing guest posts.

Where do you see the future of social media, both in general and for you?

I’m not experienced in making predictions. Here is my take on the business world and social media. I truly think that it could improve internal corporate communication and engagement.

Social media tools can help in improving vendor-client relationships and it is an extremely effective tool for marketing. Know your loyal customers – some are true influencers so keep them on your side. Arm them with the message and let the viral effect of their word of the mouth drive your growth.

Are businesses effectively using social media? If not, what can they do to improve?

In my opinion it is too early to tell. There is more than one way that businesses can leverage social media. Please see my previous answer speaking about a few.

I also don’t think that we know how to measure the effectiveness of social media investments. In the case of marketing, conversion rate is the leading business measure; turning leads to sales.

I think that social media could be used for acquiring new customers or retaining existing one but only indirectly. I think that when you try to use it explicitly people run away. Somehow social media seems more spiritual, and going with direct business messages feels like polluting it.

From my experience using social media I found that there are some people that others tend to listen to with trust. It is better for the business to build relationships with these influencers. If they find that this individual is excited about their product (or this individual approaches them) they should allow him or her to share their experience armed with all the available information about the product or service.

Maybe the measure should be something like how many relationships did the company build (relationship conversion). I actually see small businesses leading the way here.

What do you feel are the best and worst features/uses of social media?

Best – The way it changed browsing the Internet. I constantly get great content recommendations. I can also share it with others. Twitter and my friends? news feeds are my new gate. The way it spares me on email storage – posting (perma)links killed the endless file attachments (although I’m still getting some from my dad, sigh). Replacing broadcast with self-cast – you got the power! Making new connections – the invention of the follower replacing the friend concept helps to eliminate the fear of strangers, especially if the stranger has a blog.

Worst – Splogs that copy blog content and spam your comments. Nasty comments. Some videos on YouTube. Services that can’t handle the load and go down occasionally. Twitter spam account. Remembering your login and password.

You can find more ?Discussing Social Media with?? interviews here.

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