Okay Mr. Professional Social Media guru.. sit down and let’s chat a minute. Oh stop it now… close TweetDeck and give me 5 minutes. Now I know you’re busy and everything but there are some things I need to tell you about why you really DON’T understand this whole Twitter thing.
It’s impossible for you to engage with all of us
Twitter is about engagement. For those people whose followers are in the thousands and even tens of thousands how can you possibly get to know them? It’s more megaphone socializing isn’t it? Too much one way communication. Stop building numbers and build relationships.
You don’t know everything
I read constantly. I am still clueless about everything. Sure I’m creating this post right now and trying to enlighten you. Maybe I am… maybe I’m not. The point is that I want to learn… from you… or from the next person. Let’s exchange ideas. Just because I don’t have 20,000 followers doesn’t mean I don’t know stuff. It just means I don’t spend as much time as you do on Twitter. Ha!
Shut off those Auto DM’s
I don’t care about your Facebook page or your ebook. (Yet) I’m glad you thank me for following you. I’m doing so because I’d like to engage in a conversation with you. I find what you do interesting. Please don’t belittle my decision with a canned Thank you Card. Bah. Spare me.
Occasionally leaving your circle is okay
I’m glad you’ve met and talk to the same 15 people every day. I might be able to bring something to the conversation. You are talking about something that’s in my wheel house. Instead I drop a comment and listen for the crickets. Am I that uninteresting or are you forgetting the very basics of this whole thing? ENGAGEMENT.
Stop auto posting
I know the world is your oyster and everybody wants to hear what you have to say. Turn off your RSS feeds. Twitter is about two way communication. Posting every 5 minutes keeps your name to the top of my stream but seriously… you don’t need to post that often. Don’t post back to back and especially don’t do it on auto pilot. Engage me with questions or conversation but not that post on Mashable that 5 other people posted before you. Twitter shouldn’t be automated.
Twitter isn’t a social media press conference. You can’t grab 20,000 of your “friends”, speak about something and then only take questions from 2 of them. Sure I’m new… sure it’s frustrating when you first start out. There are things I see the “Professionals” do that drives me crazy. What do you see? What as rookies can we do to get noticed? Leave a comment … if you don’t suck.
