DigitalBeat

Socialmediadouchebag is now my favorite site.

I always wonder how people make conversations with more than ten people at the same time or maybe they don't engage into a conversation, but rather lecture or...spam!

I dip in and out of my twitter stream. I find it's really not that hard. You engage back those that engage you. You engage the people that interest you. Just like if you worked in a 5,000 person company, you run into people in the halls, you have water cooler talks, etc. You also deal with the people in your department, and you seek out your closest friend. The people worth it make an impression, the ones that don't generally don't hurt to give them back a courtesy follow, and to be polite. If none of these thing, them I don't follow back. If annoying I block.

I think I could handle twice as many followers as I have. Out of 5,000 I doubt I engage with more than 100 on a regular basis. Of those there's definitely a top 10.

I've had the same joke going as Socialmediadouchebag for quite some time at: puppypotpie.com I made a lot of the same jokes, so it was nice to see someone else picking up on the same complaints (offer always ends just a little while into the future, stupid guarantees, etc).

The Social Media Monkey also tweets tips for Marketers every day @SMmonkey. We even have a newsletter!

What I wish I could see is not follower count, but who a person has blocked. I know this might be like high school, but I block tons of people. I could let them follow, artificially inflating my count, but forex scammers, golf pro tips, times shares, all that crap don't need to stay in my feed. If would be great to tell at a glance if a person is discriminating, or just an attention whore.

There should be a digital signature that is verifiable - that you use for all your accounts - maybe tied to your credit card, or something. Wouldn't that eliminate the need to use captcha, and avoid scams of this nature?

Such a service would really benefit us all. I use Disqus which goes a bit into the right direction freeing me of looking up my passwords in my OFFline register. But the best solution is the one skizzed by you!
Since I mainly have my online activities focused on http://cagora.eu and http://cagora.ws I need only one log-in to access all features in all "Worlds of Interest" and in all "Worlds of Interest": ALL with the same identifier and password which saves me a lot of time and frustration.

Sorry for my error in referencing Cagora's Worlds. Here are the correct labels: "Worlds of Interest" and "LocalWorlds", both at: http://cagora.eu and http://cagora.ws !

OK - I'll publicly outcry. :-)

Some people might call it gaming the system, but you know what? Twitter themselves stack the deck by promoting (for free) people who are already celebrities. Dozens of Twitter 3rd-party services (e.g., Twitterholic) encourage it by giving increased visibility to those with the highest follower counts.

WTF do they expect???

And so now, instead of allowing people to use tools to even the playing field, they've basically a) given the edge to celebrities and b) grandfathered in those people who have been using this practice a long time.

People who use this technique are not necessarily spammers, self-promotional losers or social media douchebags. I was at 4,300 followers organically before I started this practice. Now I'm at over 26,000. Sure, some of them are junk -- so what? Who cares? What matters is that I *have* made some real friends, gotten some real business opportunities, broadened my horizons and extended my reach as a result.

I've said before that Twitter is a free marketplace of ideas. Not so free any more. They need to just keep their hands off like they did to allow it to grow. These things will work themselves out. If someone's tweeting junk, unfollow them. Their follower ratio should have nothing to do with it.

Ha, OK, well, I stand corrected.

Do you think your ability to connect to real friends and business opportunities would have been substantially hampered had you just been finding and following accounts without the aid of software? I'm genuinely curious here, because I obviously have my own biases but no real experience on the software-aided following side.

Here's the thing...and really, it's Social Network Theory 101...people tend to know people like themselves. When I looked at my 4,300 followers, and who I was actively engaged in conversation with, it was mostly other social media practitioners. Sure, it's great to have access to them to exchange ideas, learn about new resources, etc.

But they aren't generally potential clients. And while they may occasionally introduce me to potential clients (that happened once last November), there's no substitute for direct contact.

Case in point happened the first day I started this practice. I had added about 400 people (the 10% overage you're allowed). One person wrote me back and said that they liked meeting new people in Austin (I had targeted by following a popular Austin news source on Twitter). I saw her DM (I read all the DMs I get back and reply to pretty much all those that are personalized) and wrote back. A couple of exchanges, and she had invited me to a happy hour she was having at her office that afternoon.

At the happy hour, there were about 20 people -- all Twitter users, but NONE of them social media wonks. I had found a new cluster -- social media users, but not social media geeks (I love my social media geeks -- I don't mean that in any derogatory way). I've since attended their monthly happy hour a couple more times. I've gotten two clients out of that group, a meeting with a third, and I've gone to the restaurant of someone I met there.

In my book, The Virtual Handshake, one of the "7 keys to a powerful network" we describe is Diversity (another is the Number of direct connections you have). All other things being equal, a more diverse network is a more valuable network. All other things being equal, a larger network is a more valuable network. The reason growing a huge network or a radically diverse network isn't the right strategy for everyone is because you can't keep all other things equal if you pursue them. Generally, a larger network means a more shallow network -- you simply can't spend as much time with people building and maintaining strong relationships. Also, if you focus on diversity, you're not focusing on relevance, i.e., meeting the kind of people who are most able to help you with your immediate goals.

However, at certain times in your life, and in certain job roles, diversity and numbers are more important. In my case, I'm transitioning from a B2B focus to more of a B2C focus. Guess what? A larger, more diverse network is a must. Kind of obvious when you think about it, right?

In The Virtual Handshake, we also talk about the matter of social network clusters, structural holes and the power of being a bridge connector between those structural holes. Bridge connections don't happen organically. Bridge connections happen when someone is willing to step outside their comfort zone into a new social cluster.

Now, can you do that without software? Of course you can. But without software, you have to fish for one fish at a time. With software, you cast a net. How long would it take for me to reach out to 400 people one at a time? With software, it took me seconds.

And remember, this is just for the first level of relationship -- are we willing to maybe get to know each other? Those who respond positively, I respond to. Those who pump junk into my tweetstream, I drop. I'm not about the numbers just for numbers' sake -- it's just an efficient way to pour more people into the top of the funnel.