I read a story about someone getting unfollowed on Twitter and couldn’t believe the fuss about Twitter unfollows.
Asking why someone unfollows you, or even just monitoring it seems like too much effort and not profitable, so for those worried about such things.. I give the following response:
There is way too much fuss over the etiquette of who “should” follow who. I think it comes off like Miss Manners telling people how many phone numbers should be in a address book.
Back in the early days when we were writing “Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing are Changing the Way We Do Business” we saw two arguments going.
- “You’re a jerk if you don’t follow back”
- “No one could possibly follow more than 50 people”
There’s some logic in any approach one takes.. but it’s their business, not mine.
We ended up starting the book with the two words I still live by — NO RULES — who you follow and unfollow is your business. Who I follow is my business.
I have wasted a lot of time “trimming” my follow account. Above 100k, the most likely criticism is “you look like a spamer if you follow everyone” — I translate this a “YOU CAN’T PLEASE EVERYONE”
I took on the trimming project to see if I could get a more realist view of people. Now at 60k + I can’t see anything different than when it was 90K. Which seems obvious to me. I also can’t tell the difference from when I followed 3000. There’s way more tweets than I’ll ever see, and I read lists and mentions.
Still, I can easily respond to EVERY tweet with my name and probably could with triple the tweets. I have to occasionally filter out #FF tweets and other things with lists.. I’ve never seen the point of posting a list anyway (if I want to know who you think is a super BFF, I’ll just read your profile 🙂
My standard response for #FOLLOWMEBACKORIWILLCRY tweets is “I follow who I want” .. since they talked to me, I’ll probably follow them.. as I follow people who I have conversations with.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had numbers like “how many people you talk to” and “how many you’ve helped”
Follower counts don’t count.. the only number that matters it ONE.. the one person I’m in conversation with at any moment… the others are just “potential conversations”
Do you track Twitter Unfollows?
Share your thought in the comments.
It’s not enough to just set up a profile and expect wonderful things to start to happen, as if by magic. Twitter, like life, doesn’t work that way. You need to do the work, and you need to put in the hours.
And the good news?
Most of Twitter can be reduced to one basic requirement: show up. And then keep showing up. Be a presence. Let people know that you’re there, that you’re proactive, that you’re listening, that this isn’t a fad or a phase, and that you’re committed for the long run.
Bottom line? Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Here’s the thing. You don’t have to be on Twitter constantly, obsessing and talking about every little thing. In fact, that’s the worst thing you can do. It’s very much about balance. But that doesn’t mean the opposite is true. In fact, far from it: if you invest nothing into the network I can absolutely guarantee that you are going to get nothing back.
Don’t underestimate the value of being solid and dependable. If I can paraphrase Woody Allen for a moment, I’d say that’s 90% of what it takes to be successful on Twitter.
See full story on mediabistro.com
Social networking online is a great way to further your connections, and while some think it might be hurting the potential of meeting people face-to-face, the exact opposite is true.
We’ve talked about the tools we use in social media repair and follow-up with contacts met at events and conferences…
Here’s a fascinating story, a trip to Dublin where planning and focus ended up making it more profitable than you might imagine.
Social Networking with Small Events
From The Next Web
Paddy Cosgrave is no stranger to the tech conference scene. The driving force behind the Dublin Web Summit, he and his team are gearing up for another massive event this coming October. While the event itself is a year long preparation, Paddy has recently been spotted making appearances at much smaller, back-to-the-roots events, namely by way of the Pub Summit series.
The Pub Summit 100 event series is taking place in 40 countries across 5 continents over the course of 2013, all with a single focus – ing people together and provide them with the opportunity to socialize and grow their networks.
Vienna, Austria recently played host to a Pub Summit, and I had the opportunity to sit down with Paddy to discuss the roots of these events, what makes them special, why large conferences are still very important, and what and how conference and attendees can do to make the very most out of them.
“There are lots of different formats for meet-ups, and a lot of them are centered around content. But I feel that if you really want great content, you can just go on YouTube, and no matter who you’re looking to learn from, you can find a talk that they’ve done. Being lectured by a single person in a room of 100 people is a missed opportunity for those 100 people to mingle and meet each other. And the one thing we don’t do less and less of is spending time socializing with like minded people.”The rules of the Pub Summit series are simple: No pitching, a few words from the co-hosts, and no guest speakers.
“It’s booze, and good people. The Irish have been perfecting it for generations.”
When asked if these smaller type events should be the way of the future, eschewing massive conferences, Paddy comments, “Big isn’t necessarily better. A 5, 6, 7 thousand person Web Summit with 300 speakers, spread over three days, isn’t automatically a great experience. You’ve got to look at these people and recognize, what are the communities within that group. Bringing all of these people together is actually a great opportunity to create smaller spaces and sideline events. You’ve got iPhone designers, well why can’t they all go together for a eakfast? Why can’t there be dinners across the city hosted by curators of different communities? During the day, it’s a great opportunity to be inspired by great speakers in a huge auditorium. But on the periphery, you’ve got to create an ecosystem where you can go and meet individuals.”
See full story on thenextweb.com
Do you need a Twitter Cheat Sheet?
There are a many myths about engagement. Rules made up at cocktail parties and measurements that don’t allow for the one to one human connection that Twitter does best.
Dashburst reviewed a new Twitter Cheat Sheet. The facts are right, but before you implement them, let’s have a discussion here about how following them can hurt you
Are you getting the type of interaction and retweets you always hoped for on Twitter? Did you know you could basically double your engagement rates on Twitter just by including an image within your tweet? Or that using more than two hashtags or tweeting too much can significantly lower your interaction rates? Twitter is the fastest growing social network increasing by 40% over the last half of 2012. This makes it paramount for your business to master the intricacies of Twitter, which will help further raise awareness about your and and generate additional new leads.
So here are some great tips and tricks to help you increase engagement on Twitter like follower retweets, click-through rates (CTR) and replies.
First off, 78% of the engagement with a and is through retweets. As the number of tweets you send per day increases though, engagement will typically decrease. The other 22% of engagement with a brand’s tweets are from replies.
92% of the interaction with a brand’s tweets are by clicking links, but most businesses don’t realize that the engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday–only 19% of brands actually tweet during the weekend. Brands typically see 30% higher interaction rates tweeting from 8am to 7pm. Tweets that contain less than 100 characters also receive 17% higher engagement than longer tweets. So keep it short and sweet! Tweets that contain links receive 86% higher retweet rates than tweets without links. The bottom line is people are looking for you to provide them with links to relevant information.
Tweets with hashtags recieve 2X more engagement than those without hashtags, yet only 24% of measured tweets contain hashtags. Tweets with one or two hashtags have a 21% higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags. However, tweets that use more than two hashtags actually show a 17% drop in engagement. So using hashtags can be effective, just don’t overdo it!
Tweets with image links have twice the engagement rates compared to tweets without images! Also, tweets that ask followers to “Retweet” recieve 12X higher retweet rates than those that do not. However, only less than 1% of ands implement this strategy. In fact, when followers are explicitly asked to and “Retweet” is spelled out, the retweet rate is 23X higher than the average. When using the shortened term “RT” instead, the retweet rate is only 10X higher.
See full story on dashburst.com
When asked to explain social media profit strategy, I often reply with two words. “listen” and “love”
Amanda Palmer uses another two words. “Just Ask”
The latter did make for an outstanding TED Talk and won accolades all over the net this week. If you haven’t seen it, I put the video here. I just watched it again. .. WOW!
Don’t make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.
Alt-rock icon Amanda Fucking Palmer believes we shouldn’t fight the fact that digital content is freely shareable — and suggests that artists can and should be directly supported by fans.
Amanda’s story is great. I love how she learned to LISTEN. That’s very easy to practice when you spend five years professionally being quite.
Instead of pushing her music (message) on others, she found out what they wanted and saw that they got it. That’s what we call “LOVE”
Listen and love. It’s and easy as that.
Social Media Profit Strategy
When I work with clients, we do far more than talk about love. It’s serious business and we set up systems and KPI’s to measure attraction, retention and bottom line profits.
But let’s never forget. Today, more than ever, people are looking for a connection, real human to human contact and sharing of stories. This has always been what people look for in business and life.
In the 20th Century, it was easy to win with a big message blasted out using the most power you could find to millions of consumers who were lucky enough to have mass media for the first time and happy to sit through ads.
We always preferred a two way dialog. Thanks to the Internet and the technologies calls social media that’s possible. Some companies are learning to use what Amanda Palmer talked about, they listen to the their audience (prospects/customers) and do right by them (we say “love”)
Who Else is Using Love as a Strategy?
Most of those asking me for help in social media have one thing on their mind “How do I get this message out?”
We have the answer. We let the market know that our clients are ready to listen.
Do you have a social media profit story? Share below in the comments. I’m listening.
