I have way too many Twitter connections. Let’s not delude ourselves that they are Followers-that’s a misnomer if ever there was one. Yep that’s the price you pay for accepting every request. What you say! How can you have too many? Isn’t the goal to have an infinite number of Tweeters in your tribe? Those with the most followers win-surely.Ok perhaps I’m being overly wry. But have you considered the downside to building a large Twitter base?
- Too many tweets from anonymous twits create a din, not an orchestra.
- The tweets that you actually see are completely random and virtually impossible to engage.
- Too many ‘followers’ assume that they now have an intimate relationship with you that justifies them sending you automated direct messages-that under any other circumstances would be considered spam.
Why bother then? Well of course it’s not ALL bad! A few minutes browsing especially following the retweets (those are usually the interesting ones) can be very illuminating, diversionary and lead you in directions that you’d never expect.
There’s also that nagging feeling that Twitter is a social medium that hasn’t fully evolved yet and perhaps its better to be in it and see how it all unfolds than be a bystander.
Enough about Twitter. This Blog was originally supposed to touch on that nebulous concept called engagement. This is somewhat different to connectivity. Hook me up to your Facebook page and I guess we’re connected perhaps never to directly communicate. Engagement is immeasurably more powerful than a degree or two of separation.
We may share an acquaintance, but that doesn’t mean we are now related. We do however have a reference point that gives us an excuse to become acquainted.
It’s ironic how much time many social networkers spend chasing people to add to their collection and then proceed to sprint off into the distance with barely a wave.
Here’s a thought. Not very original but I would suggest profound in its effectiveness.
Make a decision to actively engage 10 or 20 of your connections per day for the next 21 days and be prepared to see a quantum shift in your online experience.
How? Sorry If I’m over doing the rhetorical questions!
Respond to comments. No I don’t mean copy and paste the same response all over the place like a poodle introducing herself to the neighbourhood! Check out someone’s Facebook profile and see if you have anything in common that you can make a genuine comment about. If you have nothing in common why are they in your social network? Not many people do this and when it happens it creates a much bigger impression than you’d think.
Check out people’s blogs-and yes you’ve guessed it-leave a relevant comment. I don’t mean something like ‘hey dude great Blog check out my GRQ affiliate program it’s awesome!”
Once you’ve built some genuine connections you can then ask them to visit your Youtube channel or blog and many will reciprocate. Imagine if just 1% of your social media connections popped by your site and left a friendly and supportive comment. You’d feel like an absolute celebrity. How come? Well work out how many people that is. More than likely 1 in 1000 will take the trouble to so unprompted.
Authenticity takes time to become second nature. Human nature has a natural default towards competitiveness, which alas is not great glue for social adhesiveness.
- Instead of trying to impress, try being impressed.
- Be interested instead of trying to be interesting
- Give compliments rather than chase them.
- Tell people how inspiring they are.
You get the message. I know, you already know all this-we all do-but sometimes we kinda get sucked in to the vortex of following the crowd-shouting ever louder to get our message out there-only to realise no one’s listening.
Hope this doesn’t sound too evangelical!
If you can be bothered leave a comment and yep I do practice what I preach and I’ll gladly reciprocate-of course if you think it’s all rubbish then feel free to ignore.
Hope your universe is unfolding well for you!
Cheers Kiaran
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