So these days I think you've got to feel for the folks just getting into Twitter. When it was first released to the public in 2006 during SXSW Interactive, I didn't get it at all. The phrase "microblogging" still rings hollow to me. Twitter is NOT BLOGGING folks.
These days you can really tell when some one, or in this case a new conference/organization is trying to gain followers. I mean, what's a new tweeter supposed to do? In order to get followers you have to follow. In order to be successful you have to have lots of followers. So you have to follow a lot of people.
Well, the metrics don't work out quite that simply. And these days sooooo much of the tweets filling the Twitter.com web browser version of Twitter are in a word: CRAP. The scammers and RSS content drivers are out in mass. And as the golden egg is pursued via social media, what better way to get things going than creating a spankin new Twitter account.
So this unidentified tweeting org has begun following others in order to spread the love. But I have a hard time taking them seriously when I open their bio page and almost all of the people they follow have no bio pic yet. (A really good sign that the twitter account is bogus, spammy or scammy.)
But it gets a little funnier when you start looking at the accounts they are following that DO have pics. Notice the pentagram symbol. Now I'm not sure about your perspective on this, but I would guess if you were looking to join a professional organization and you saw Bruxinha0666 as one of the honorary or promoted members… Well, I'm just saying, it doesn't always present the appropriate impression.
So nothing against Bruxinha0666, but if the number doesn't clue you in what about the actual bio should you happen to click on his icon?
So I guess just plain bruxinha was taken?
and so on and so on…
Need a new bogus account just add another number on the end of bruxinha and you're in business. So… what about 666?
Final question, so if this professional organization is looking to grow it's membership and gain credibility through it's effective use of social media, don't you think they would pay a bit more attention to who they are "friending" in order to get the expected reciprocal "follow?"
I guess I'll ping the association and let them know that 666 stands for something less cool than "open source" or "hacker." But I can't help them with all those faceless bios. Cause a bird icon doesn't stand for a tweeter, it stands for pecker.
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/not-blogging
Latest Twitter Posts
In a lively discussion today with a seasoned advertising executive he pressed me on one of his clients doesn't really need to DO TWITTER.
May 20 2009
Good 2 Great Content – How Do You Cross Post and Promote Your Best Writing?
So we write and we write and we write. And if we work it really hard we get a hundred or so folks to visit our blog (people other than friends and family) and that's it. Done?
What are the additional options for your content? You can Tweet it. You can cross post it. You can try to get a guess writing gig on Mashable or RWW. You can chat, IM and email about it. But over the course of the last six months I have found the following alternate strategies work for me. Now there is always too much of a good thing, so with any cross posting or excerpting strategy it is best to reserve these ideas for your BEST content and not everything. Cause we all know, everything is NOT wonderful, it's miscellaneous!
inSocialMedia (a professional NING network with almost 3k members focused on Social Media for business)
Having been invited to be an Admin of inSocialMedia I can promote good posts on the front page. This week it happens to be one of mine. (grin)
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Posterous (a free blogging platform, easily updated via email and SMS)
One of the great features of posterous is the ability to create posts from SMS and Emails. And then there's a little "Post to elsewhere" link, seen above, that can repost to Facebook, Tumblr, Google Pages and Twitter. I often repost stuff to Posterous and use their tool to put the post on my Facebook page, my legacy Google blog and Tumblr. I usually don't use Posterous to do my Tweeting. I try to keep my Tweets under tight control.
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LinkedIN (posting in your status update is one technique, but the action is in the Groups)
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Facebook (again the wall is good, and high visibility, but the discussions in the groups, if you find a lively one, are much more interactive.
The OpenAustin facebook page started by Whurley has some active discussions about the City of Austin website controversy. If you have content that addresses an issue, you might find a group that is aligned with that issue.
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Specific commenting on high-value blogs
This post by Patrick Morehead of AMD has gotten thousands of views. And my comment is number one right at the bottom of the first page. Engaging with the tech community via commenting has some great advantages. The company may even take notice of you at some point. Patrick and I have become friends first via blogging and comments and at SXSWi we met face to face. I count him as a mentor and visionary. And when I see that he has posted one an important topic I will go give it a read. Sometimes I have something to add. And when I do, I may pick up a hand-full of the viewers of his original post.
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Best-of Tweets
Occasionally I will broadcast a Tweet with a "best of" Uber.la tag. For example I will occasionally RT my Twitter Rules AND the 1-2-3 Guide to Twitter.
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Collective Pages on your site. This is one of the most powerful concepts. If you look at my site, I have tried to organize it more like a web site than a blog. That's because I hope that the content I am writing is more like a book and less like a newspaper. So I have collected some of the concepts on pages that are tabs across the top of my site. One example is the InfoStreams. I am working on a series of posts on the top InfoFeed tools that I use and how I use them.
If I do my work well, the posts become chapters of that "book" or tab. And the Infostream Strategies tab becomes a reference site for people looking to get a handle on various concepts of social media. If these "posts" were burried in my "archives by date" or even tags like "twitter" or "friendfeed" it would be easy to imagine them vanishing into the blog stream and no longer being found or referenced.
That's it for now. Please add any good ideas you have and I will approve your comments here and share them with a broader audience.
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/good2great
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Tags: 1-2-3 guide to twitter, alternate strategies, amd, best-of, blog commenting, conversations, crosspost, excerpt, facebook, fire everything, followers, following, friends and family, google, google pages, high value blogs, high visibility, infostream, Infostream Strategies, inSM, insocialmedia, lifestream, linkedin, lively one, mashable, patrick morehead, posterous, retweet, rss feeds, rss of life, social media strategies, tight control, tweets, twitter rules, twitter tools
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