Twitter Archives - Page 10 of 17 by Mark Murnahan

Social Media Objectives: Popularity or Profits?

What do you seek from social media? Do you know? Are you wasting time?

In a recent conversation with a friend, I asked him why he spends so many hours per day using Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other social networks. I asked him if he had achieved any considerable objectives, and whether they were personal or business objectives.

I was really asking him these things to help him consider his objectives, and to gather his opinions. After all, gaining others’ perspectives is a huge benefit of social media. My friend works for a living and counts on new business to keep a paycheck coming in. So there is presumably a business hope for gain. He admits that he has hopes that it will help him meet some future business goals, but it has thus far been unfruitful. He also is a very friendly and social person, so there is clearly a gain there. He meets a lot of cool people. I wanted to know how his gains measure up with his expectations and his goals, or if he even considered any goals, or what action he was taking to address them specifically. Without actually having a set goal, all of the greatest social life of an arena rock star will not get you there. You must know what it is that you are after in order to achieve it.

I approached this subject with my friend in part because I really wanted his honest answers of how he believed it would benefit him to be what I call a “popular information gatherer”. There are many people who do this, but seldom do they actually have an answer for their reason, and even more seldom do they actually find any benefit for all the time and energy they spend. Plus, there are a lot of services that do this, so the “service” they render of shoveling content back and forth across their networks is not a whole lot different than that friend you have who emails you jokes sixty times per day.

I believe that is it very important that if you spend a lot of time with anything, you should have a good idea why you are doing it. The reason can be anything you like, but there should be a conscious purpose for the time you spend. Otherwise, you should perhaps spend more time with your children, cleaning house, or a hobby. Time is your most precious resource, and once you use it, you cannot have it back. Spend your time well, and know why you are doing it.

For some, social networking is a hobby, and it certainly has some interesting appeal for many people. There can be many different benefits to a good social network. Social networking is great for meeting friends. Friends can help you to find customers. After all, if you are my friend, I will do my best to send people your way when they need the product or service that helps you to earn a living. Don’t you do this for your friends if given the opportunity? There are a lot of great benefits, but it seems common that I ask people what they are after and they either truly do not know or they are going about it completely wastefully.

A more serious question was in how much time my friend spends trying to be popular. Being popular is not so bad, but it can also be a bit of an addiction. For example, I know a lot of people will use Twitter to send rapid-fire messages about the funny video they just found or the amazing news article that just broke. They will monitor Digg.com, Alexa Hot URLs, Google Trends, and dozens of RSS feeds to find the coolest and latest trend and hope to be the first person to make the story popular. So this begs the question of what they are really after. A common answer is that it will help them become more recognized in rating services that rank users with various standards. If they are the “top user” in their city, state, region, or country, that is awesome! It will help more people find them and watch what they have say.

Here comes the wasteful and arrogant part. When these people do this, they often completely neglect the fact that if they are popular with knitting grandmothers, but the people they really want to reach are a completely different group, they may be wasting a whole lot of time.

The other side of this is that networking is nearly always good. Meeting the knitting grandmother is great. She may become your good friend. There is also an outside chance that she will introduce you to her daughter who is in the same field as you or is single and really right up your alley. There are many possibilities that are opened up with networking and knowing a lot of people. The possibilities are hard to count.

There must be a balance! If the popularity contest is what you are after, there is a huge likelihood that other areas of your social media hopes or expectations will suffer greatly. If all you want is to be popular without any reason, you are probably lying to yourself and others. Being popular in itself is not a meaningful goal. Being popular in order to spread a purposeful message or to meet an objective such as earning a living can make a lot more sense. Popular by itself is really pretty shallow and meaningless, don’t you think?

So, when you set out to become popular by spending hour after hour Tweeting, Digging, Facebooking, and FriendFeeding every last “useful” piece of content, why not take a look at your message and find a place for quality in the equation. If all you are doing is passing along the story you just found, perhaps consider why. What is your objective? Is it to make somebody laugh? That is fine, but how many hours are you spending, and what might you be missing during all those hours?

If you are really clever and resourceful, perhaps you may try creating some content for a change. Then, if you are really … I mean really good at it, there is a chance that the unique message you have to share can take on a quality tone over and above quantity. Best of all, it can set a tone of your own, and not just like that of the dog who drags a dead rabbit to the porch to impress their master.

Avoid Making Assumptions in Social Media

The particular incident I will explain occurred on Facebook, but can happen anywhere. I read a Facebook status of a person who was contemptuous toward the American judicial system. The person who wrote it was angry about the way the laws of his country work. He had a bone to pick. I suspect that anybody with a parking citation could give some criticism of the court system. Is it perfect? Of course not, but when compared to many nations, it is pretty effective. Whether we adapt our behavior to live within the laws, or not, is our choice, but this is not a legal argument … it is a blog about misunderstanding and making assumptions.

I had a reply for the Facebook status. Replies are accepted on Facebook. If you do not want a reply, it is generally a good idea that you keep it off your Facebook wall. My reply was based on my opinion of his status message. It made him angry that I gave my honest response. Perhaps he would have preferred that I lie.

He took my disagreement as public disrespect toward him. He was angry because he thought everybody should agree with him. I came to find out by calling him on the telephone that the reason he was so passionate about the topic came with a back-story. His Facebook status did not come with a back-story, or perhaps I would have commented on that, too. It seems that he is angry that a bunch of his family members are in jail as a result of a grand jury indictment that he thinks is unfair. My opinion is that a grand jury is usually not something to mess with, and those kind of indictments do not normally come without cause. I think there is a pretty good assumption that you have broken the law before they assemble a grand jury.

I have never faced charges before a grand jury. Come to think of it, nobody in my family has ever been indicted by a grand jury. Five of his family members were, all at once. Darn the luck, somehow this guy’s whole family seems to be getting the shaft. What an amazing coincidence that the courts are picking on his family all at once … and all of them innocent. Darn the luck, he presented a statement for others to comment on it … but preferably in his favor.

In any case, this very passionate individual was angry that I made a reply that did not suit his agenda. He made the assumption that everybody reading his Facebook status would respond to his lengthy story of his innocently imprisoned family rather than to this individual comment he made. In fact, he even said, in our telephone conversation, that “Most of the 400 people on my Facebook know the whole story behind it.” If you make this kind of assumption, you are delusional and bound to encounter many disagreements.

The point here is that if you make a brief statement about something, it is unwise to assume that everybody knows your lengthy story behind the statement. If it is in a Twitter or Facebook status update, be sure that if you do not want people to respond to only a portion of your message that you give them the whole story for their consideration. Otherwise, be happy that they took the care to reply to what little information you gave them.

On a similar note, it is best that if a person does give you a more complete story that you do not simply comment on the title of the story. What I mean by this is that if you comment on a Facebook or Twitter update that has a link associated, be sure you are not only commenting on the subject, but rather on the whole story.

This is just one of many simple ways to avoid conflict in social media. Please tell me what you think. I await your comments.

Stop Stealing in Social Media

We have all seen a blog post with an interesting video or a link to a news story that comes through by a third party. You know, the person who writes something up and includes additional content that they feel may interest you.

Sometimes it is as simple as if I added a YouTube video in this post and you liked it, so you share it with your friends with the YouTube link instead of sharing it in the format and with the comments I was trying to share.

Sure, you can say that you are passing along the message of just what you wanted to pass along, and sometimes that is fine. However, when you do that, there is sometimes a value added purpose for the format in which you received it that is missed. Sometimes it is because the author of the blog, Digg account, or FriendFeed wanted to start a dialog with you. Maybe they really wanted your comments. Maybe they earn their living based on the content that they provided, and not just the third-party link you passed along. The matter of advertising is not the case for me, because I have not sold links on my Websites since the mid-1990’s. However, advertising is a pretty common practice on websites, and one that really does not hurt most people. When the traffic is stolen, it really does matter to the operator of the site.

When I see this sort of “stealing” as I call it, I am not pointing fingers at you. I am simply saying that a little bit of consideration for why and how you received the interesting tidbit is often in order. For those people who do earn their living by the traffic their Website receives, do not think for a moment that they are not fully aware that you have done this. The Internet is a highly trackable place, and the professionals know that you have retweeted, Facebooked, blogged, or otherwise passed their hard work along and cut them out of the equation. Count on it! Oh, and by the way, Twitter even addresses this in their Terms of Service. They will suspend your account for retweeting without attribution to the author of a message.

This just came to me as I considered the blog post I wrote tonight on the blog for my latest book, “Living in the Storm” where I included a video of “We Are the World” by USA for Africa. I saw that the video was getting a sudden spike in plays after I wrote the blog. I looked, and sure enough, people who read my work had passed it along without any consideration for the thoughts and words in my post. I should not need to mention that as an author, I found it troubling because I have worked very hard and I deserve every bit of attention I have produced for my book.

The question this begs is in how can it possibly hurt to pass along content in the context with which it was presented? Just think of it as just a little piece of respect for the author. Authors and content providers often work very hard and deserve it.

I know I am not the only guy who feels this way, so speak up and give me your comments here on the blog.

If you just must pass along something without any attribution or guilt, here you go: Take Rick Astly with you. 😉

Why Do You Use Social Media … Be Honest!

I said in the title, “Be honest” and I meant it. I conducted a poll a while back that reflected that a huge number of people were using social media for business. This is true! It was funny to also find a huge number of people using social media just for fun and friends. This is true, too! Can they not mix with a reasonable expectation of results for both purposes?

The truly pathetic fact about both of the numbers I received is that many people were lying. The fact is very clear that although many people use social networking “strictly socially” the majority also have a business agenda. The sickening part is that so many of the people claiming to use social media “strictly socially” are the ones hiding their business agenda behind being social. I mean what in the world is wrong with business, anyway? If you are in business, should you be ashamed that you want more business? Should you spend 24.5 hours per day to be social, only to be let down that everybody hates a business agenda?

To me, this is a complete and utter lie! So many “experts” keep saying to send out 90% social content and 10% business content and suggest that people spend all of their time finding “interesting” quotes or news articles to send, and then only a fraction of their time actually doing what feeds them. How does this make sense? If you believe them, you should probably grab your toothbrush to clean out the poop they just fed you.

Sure, I agree that a bunch of advertising is an annoyance. However, to say that we are all here just for fun is a complete misrepresentation. Looking at the true number of hours spent with social networking leads anybody with the ability to add two plus two correctly to figure this out. Really, if people are working an average of eight hours per day, but yet you want me to believe that they spend ninety percent of their time at Twitter “just for fun”, you are hitting my gag reflex.

If you keep spending all of your time hoping that somebody will take enough delight with the content you found at some other Website that they will come to your Website to spend a bunch of money, you will do better to rub a lamp and hope for a genie.

Your comments are welcome … as long as you are honest!

Related article:

Most Influential Twitter Users

I have noticed, and perhaps you have as well, that in order to be one of the “most influential” Twitter users, it requires that you take your days and nights to tweet every last piece of social media “news” that you can get your hopeful little retweeting paws on. It really helps if it is about the latest geeky Twitter application by some big named company promising that it will be their huge social media savior and make them squillions of dollars by knowing this “secret” tidbit of wisdom you have to share with them. Even better … maybe being one of the first to retweet something by Mashable.com or TechCrunch.com. Heck yes, anything by Cashmore or Arrington must be worth dollars in the bank!

Is anybody else out there using Twitter sick to the top of their throat with this phenomenon? I am! In fact, I think I need to go gargle to get that vomit taste out of my mouth. I mean, what is this all about? The people who are purportedly at the top of their Twitter game seem to have nothing but a bunch of journalistic crap about social media to preach, sell, and warn you about. What in the heck is it all about if not for the geeky crowd telling you what to do with it? Do you really not know how to communicate? Do you really not understand that it is important that people like you? Do you really not already know that if you retweet something about Twitter that it makes you a part of the “popular crowd”? What are you really after?

This whole thing has me about sick to the top of my throat, and that is coming from a guy who wrote a book to actually help people understand Twitter and the best use of it. The insane thing about all of this is that if everybody is such an expert, who the hell is actually saying anything useful. I mean, if it is all so damn useful, why do people keep tweeting all of this crap to tell people how it really “works” this week? Ask them if they really get paid for this or if they are just doing it to be the one waving the biggest shiny object to lure the next big sucker.

That is my piece for today. Maybe, since it is a Friday, you may like to learn why in the heck people keep sending all of those damn usernames along with a #ff or #followfriday. Yeah, they are usually waving a shiny object to attract suckers. I am sorry if you don’t like it … unfollow me if it hurts too much. 😉

If you wonder what I have to say about it, I have a couple options. Either take the time to get familiar with my blog, or go buy my book, “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends” and find out that there are others who care more about the people than the game of looking popular. Otherwise, maybe a few more thousand tweets about the next jQuery plugin, Twitter application, or other social media advice from the person starving for attention will somehow be useful to you. In that case, good luck!