Therefore, I wasn’t using Twitter correctly; instead of following everyone back that followed me (which I should be doing, according to the email), I was obviously a snob that only followed the “elite” and I should “re-evaluate my Twitter use”.

The email ended by saying I shouldn’t advise on social media because I’m breaking a cardinal sin – which is, connect with everyone or don’t connect at all.

Okay….

So, I sat down and thought about it. Am I a Twitter snob? Should I follow everyone who follows me? Maybe. Maybe not. If snobbery is down to reciprocal numbers then, yes, I am a Twitter snob. But (and excuse my cussing), to me numbers on Twitter mean f**k all.

You can have 100,000 followers. But are they all live? Are they all human? Or are they a mix of humans, live accounts, dead accounts, spammers and bots? If they’re not all actual people that are active and engaging, then they don’t count. Unless you’re after false numbers, of course, to make you feel more important than you are. And there’s plenty of that going around…

So, fair enough. I have a skewed ratio. Which makes me a snob. But here’s the thing.

I’d rather be a snob with a skewed and (mostly) accurate ratio, than someone pretending to be something they’re not. Which, after all, is the real snobbery. No?

photo credit: teotwawki

I’m a Twitter Snob? Maybe originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

(And my apologies to Chris Brogan who asked us not to talk about Twitter in 2009 – my bad!).

Maybe it is a fad – maybe the detractors are right. But in the meantime, if you want to see why it’s so popular and why it’s hailed as one of the friendliest social media networks around, look no further than FollowFriday, where people all over the world recommend names for others to follow.

That’s true interaction and social media community building right there. We live in a word-of-mouth market – Twitter users are taking that to the next level.

Go to the Twitter search option now, enter #followfriday and meet your new best friends today. See you there.

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Still Not Convinced? Check Out Twitter’s FollowFriday originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

How well do you keep your personal and business life separate? Are you able to separate the two relatively easy, or do they crossover too much to have significantly different views? Or to put it another way, if you had a personal issue with someone could you still work with them professionally?

I ask this as a situation arose today where I had to question whether I was in the wrong, someone else was, or was there even any wrong to start with. Okay, that sounded confusing – let me try again.

For anyone’s that’s been reading this blog or following me on Twitter for the last month or so, you’ll know that I founded a charity project for 2009, the 12for12k Challenge. While ambitious in its fund-raising aim, it’s also (to me) achievable, thanks to the way that myself and the partners that have joined me in the challenge are leveraging social media to raise funds.

Everyone involved in the project is giving their time for free – there’s no admin cost and any man (or woman) hours put in is on top of normal work and personal time. I don’t say this to make us sound like saints, although personally I’ll never be able to thank these people enough for the help they’re giving.

Rather, I say it to show that when it’s a good cause, people generally come out in force to help in whatever way they can. It’s called selflessness and it also goes to you kind people that are donating to each month’s chosen charity.

So today stunned me a little.

One of the hardest things with the 12for12k project (and, I’m sure, other non-profit causes) is raising awareness. Hitting people at the right time, driving traffic to the website for details, getting the word out – it’s not easy. Also, because of the economy and time of year, donations are a little slow at the minute. Which we always knew might happen – January is a tough month for countless charities.

To try and raise awareness, my partners and I are reaching out to our social media connections to ask if they’d help promote to their followers on Twitter. Or write a short blog post. Or record a video message for us, much like Jason Falls did. So far, everyone we spoke to has been brilliant – if they can’t do it right away, it’s definitely on the immediate future agenda.

Everyone apart from one.

Open and Shut Case.

One of the creative partners on the 12for12k team emailed a particular social media “power player” and asked if they’d be open to any of the above promotional suggestions. The response was, “No – I have an issue with someone on the team.”

Uh – run that by me again?

Now, unfortunately, I don’t know what the issue is or who it’s with since no further information was forthcoming, but I’m a little surprised and maybe just a tad disappointed.

This person prides themself on how open and helpful they are to other people, and helping others to attain the goals they set out to reach. Their blog has an excellent and loyal readership and their Twitter account is close to 20,000 followers.

So this is why I’m left scratching my head. I can’t see any issue this person would have with one of our team that they would put it above trying to change the lives of millions of people. I put the question out to Twitter, about personal issues clouding professional ones, and with few exceptions the answer was pretty unanimous – be professional, work around the issue and get the best results.

Of course, if it’s an ethical problem that this person has with either me or one of my partners, then I can understand their point of view. Ethics play a very large part in my personal and professional make-up, so I do understand.

Yet knowing the partners like I do, I just don’t see where an ethical issue could come into play. Which means it must be me, for some reason. Hopefully the person involved will respond to my email asking what the issue is and can it be resolved.

I know there will always be reasons for not liking someone, personally or professionally. I know there are times when you don’t want to work with someone. Yet for all these times, surely the greater good of a project should see you able to overcome personal feelings and get a professional job done.

Or is that asking too much? How about you – can issues be overcome or are the clouds too dense?

Clouding The Issue originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

Can you remember when television was called the root of all evil? How it was blamed for desensitizing kids and breaking up the family fibre? American author and cultural critic Neil Postman wrote a book about it in 1985, called Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Postman’s argument was that television lessened the educational growth of people, as well as dumbed down arguments, by going for entertainment and images over political discourse and more serious issues.

While there’s no denying that television can be one distraction too many at times, there’s also no doubting its educational uses as well – National Geographic and The History Channel being just two examples.

Jump forward a little more than twenty years, and there’s a new target – the Internet.

It’s being blamed for everything from turning kids into zombies to the disappearance of social skills in the “real world”. But is it really that bad?

Hey Teacher, Leave These Kids Alone.

Far from turning kids into online-addicted mindless zombies, a new study shows that the Internet-savvy youth of today are far more creative than we were. The Digital Youth Research report, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, uses social network giant MySpace as an example. Just creating a MySpace page and customizing it shows a level of creativity and basic programming skills beyond most offline equivalents.

Of course, this report isn’t on the front pages of traditional media for one simple reason – it offers a positive view of the very medium that sells newspapers when the headlines are screaming negatives. If the report had said the Internet and social networking was hurting our kids’ education, you can be sure it would have been a lead story with quotes from “experts” all too willing to lend their view.

But you know something? We’re just as bad at times.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

One of the foremost sayings about social media is how it’s bringing people together. Opening up doors that had previously been locked, and offering help and encouragement to anyone that needs it. Simply put, the caring medium. But it’s not always like that, is it?

How can it be when bloggers are vociferously attacked for writing a sponsored post? Or when people take being “unfriended” by someone so seriously that they decide to investigate to almost stalker-like proportions? Add in the antagonistic comments that bloggers receive for their points of view, and you have to wonder if we really are that social.

So here’s what we need to do.

Accentuate the Positives.

It’s all too easy to be negative about something. By our very nature, human beings are happiest when we’re complaining. We love it when someone jumps the queue so we can open up on them, or our heroes make a mistake so we can bring them down.

Let’s stop this. Now.

Instead, let’s celebrate the good that social media can offer and concentrate on making that the norm, as opposed to the excuse. Let’s tell everyone about the positive thing that happened to us today because of social media.

Here’s an example. Yesterday, I met with a potential new client that found me through Twitter. His company is in the same city as me, so we met up for coffee and discussed a potential project. And even if I don’t win that project, the product he wants me to promote is so good I’ll be using it myself anyway. Without Twitter, he wouldn’t have been aware of me, and I would have been missing out on a great application.

That’s just one example from one person. I’m sure you have tons of examples of your own.

The question is – are you sharing them?

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Accentuate The Positives originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

Image by trackrecord via Flickr

Have you ever looked around you – really looked around you – and saw your place in the world?

It could be your place in your own particular world, or your place in the bigger picture.

It doesn’t really matter – all that matters is you take that look around you and recognize your place in it.

We live in a society that changes quickly and moves even quicker. It’s easy to get lost, swept away or side-tracked. Things we meant to do yesterday we don’t have a chance to do tomorrow.

We live in a world where our families are second to our jobs because industries are so frail they could be gone by the time you finish reading this. We go where the work is, and not always together.

While some things can’t change, others can. So let’s try.

Heroes Can Be Dangerous.

In times of need, we often look for heroes to guide us through, or to make sense of what we’re doing. Yet heroes come in many shapes and guises. False heroes offer little except hope that isn’t there. We know deep inside that these heroes are false, and yet we still follow them in the vain hope that maybe it’s us that’s wrong.

It isn’t. And you don’t need false heroes to guide you – true heroes are all around you.

They’re there in the eyes of the children you bear as they make their way from innocence to adulthood. They’re in the parents that raised you to be who you are today. They’re in the mirror, looking back at you every day. That job you hold down to feed your family? These luxuries you give up to keep a roof over the heads of your loved ones? The sacrifices you make to put a smile on the faces of those you cherish?

You’re being a hero every day of your life. Realize that, and forget the false heroes – no-one makes a difference like you do.

Pay It Forward.

The world is changing. The greedy are being found out for who and what they are and the society changers are coming to the fore. Be part of this.

Encourage people to greatness and show them they, and everyone else, have the ability to change the way we live – all of us. The Pay It Forward Foundation started as a simple book idea – yet the simplest ideas offer the greatest scope for change. Read the book; visit the website; digest the information. Encourage greatness in others and see the greatness in yourself.

Be A Show-Off.

Our world is connected like never before. Our parents could only dream of how we can reach others with the click of a button. Our children will be the forebearers of the true social networks. Let’s use our connectivity now to set the standards for tomorrow.

If you’re on Twitter and you like someone’s train of thought, recommend them to your community. If you read a blog that inspires or makes you ask questions, share it with friends and colleagues and join the discussion. If you have something to say yourself that makes you think, say it – we’re all listening and we want to hear.

We have the opportunity to help the good and the great rise to the challenges ahead. Our leaders can’t do everything themselves – we need to be leaders as well. Show off the words and the work of those who inspire you, and in turn you’ll inspire others to learn from you.

Ours is a small world in a vast landscape. It’s up to us – to you – how well it sits in that landscape. Carl Sagan says it so much more eloquently than I ever could. Watch, and listen. And see your place in the world, yours and mine.

I’ll be on the other side waiting for you. Care to join me and help our pale blue dot grow bright?

Pale Blue Dots originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

My good friend Susan Murphy wrote an interesting post yesterday, about how small towns are social networks. She points out that small towns have led the way for years when it comes to networking and seeing social leaders rise to the top. It’s a really good read and I highly recommend it.

It reminded me of something I’ve been thinking of for a while – how to involve the offline community more with the online one. While the likes of Twitter, Friendfeed and other social media tools are in the ascendancy, they’re still only used by a relatively small number of users, personal and professional.

So how do we change this?

How about we offer real-world and relevant use to offline communities so the online ones would experience growth and understanding? If we gave examples – workable examples – and led the way in showing users how to benefit from these self-same examples?

A conversation I had with my friend and PR person extraordinaire Lizz Harmon led me to think that this can be easier than many might think.

Imagine for a minute that you’re looking to travel somewhere for your vacation. Generally, you go by what the travel agent tells you. Now, unless you’re one of the very few lucky ones who’ve had great travel agents, the information you receive often doesn’t tell the whole story. Unfinished hotels, work sites just off the beach, sewer problems – and that’s just the good stuff.

I don’t blame the travel agent completely – after all, their job is to sell you a vacation and that’s where they make their money. I just wish for a little more honesty.

Now, imagine if you’re the same person looking to go on vacation and you get your information from a town or city’s Tourist Information Bureau – but via Twitter. Customer service representatives cover the account 24/7 and are able to answer any questions you might have. They’re not on commission so there’s no need for any imaginative descriptions.

They give you up-to-date information on places to stay and visit, local events and much more. By interacting with the future visitor, the tourist information office is doing everything right when it comes to placing its town or city in a positive light. And for small towns, it lets them keep up with their city equivalents and encourages tourism into their little part of the world.

Why stop there? Why not have councillors or Chambers of Commerce online and answering concerned citizens or incoming businesses respectively? Restaurants or movie theaters could offer discounts and incentives to anyone that brings in a printed deal from Twitter, Facebook or similar.

There’s a multitude of ways that businesses in particular can encourage the online and offline communities to come together. Our job is to help them get there. Who would you want to see online and what services would you use?

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Turning Towns Into Cities originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

This is a guest post from social media consultant Jacob Morgan.

The best way to get involved in social media can be summed up in one word – act. Spending 6 months researching and planning your social media campaign is not the best thing to do. Now I’m not saying don’t have a plan – I’m saying have a plan that you can put together and act on quickly and effectively and make it actionable sooner rather than later.

It’s always a good idea to start listening and getting a feel for your landscape and surroundings, I consider this a part of acting as it involves engaging in the social media space. Every day you spend “planning” is a day where you are potentially missing hundreds or thousands of conversations/relationships that you could be engaging in.

You have to remember that social media is very dynamic.

• New tools emerge daily
• Your competition isn’t going to sit still
• Brand/company sentiments can change rapidly
• You are going to miss out on the conversations that are going on now if you wait
• Part of succeeding in social media is about trying new things, it won’t be “perfect”
• There is no formula for success

Your plan is most likely going to change once you actually engage in social media and begin interacting with your users and customers. In fact, your users and customers SHOULD dictate some of your plan; they will tell you what they want, how to build it, who they want to talk to, and what they expect (among other things).

The best thing to do is start small (even while you are still formulating and constructing your plan) because at least you can begin engaging in conversations and building relationships. For example, you may want to create a Twitter account for a customer service representative that can monitor conversations and engage in them. Maybe you want to create a customer facing blog that the company can use to provide some unique company or industry information.

While these conversations and relationships are building you can think of larger more strategic ways to engage with your users, i.e. building microsites, creating your own social network, promoting products/services via social media channels, etc.

Creating a plan is good – acting is better.

• Jacob Morgan is a social media marketing consultant and runs a team of Technical SEO’s. Jacob has founded a start-up in the social media space and has worked with brands such as Adobe, Conde Nast, Sandisk and Salesforce. He is an avid and passionate blogger on all things social media and marketing related. He also loves meeting and building relationships with people so say hello and let him know if he can help you! You can connect with Jacob on:
  Twitter
  Facebook
  LinkedIn

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The Best Way to Get Involved in Social Media originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

It’s one of the current axioms doing the rounds online – “I love Twitter but how do I sell it to my client or boss?”.

You can see the benefits because you use it every day, but just how do you transfer that message to those who wonder where the benefit of 140-character conversations are found?

Perhaps that’s not the question to ask – instead, how about asking why you even have to justify it at all.

Think about it for just a moment – your client or your boss’s success has probably had a lot to do with business relationships built up over the years.

Additionally, being aware of the business market around their industry will also have played a large part in their success. And you can be pretty sure that both these reasons are continuously worked on and monitored to sustain that success.

Now think of why Twitter is so beneficial to you.

Are you building relationships with great contacts? Are you keeping abreast of the latest news in the industry because people are talking about it in their Twitter stream? Are you finding content and advice that helps you grow both personally and professionally because of the information you’re a part of through your Twitter contacts and the information from their contacts?

I’d hazard a guess that the answer to all of these questions is a fairly comprehensive “Yes.” So why should it be any different for your client, boss or anyone else you’re trying to extol the virtues of Twitter to?

The next time you want to get your client involved in Twitter, or your boss dismisses it as nothing more than a fad for people having banal conversations, ask them a couple of simple questions:

• How do the majority of your customers find you?
  
• How do they then communicate with you?

You’ll probably find that the majority of the answers to the first question are “Via Google” and the majority of the answers to the second question will be, “They’ll call us or email us an inquiry.”

In short, they’re looking for specific goods or services and want to open up a dialogue with the hope of fulfilling that need.

The next step is usually a customer service representative calling back, or perhaps even a member of the sales team calling to discuss the (potential) client’s needs. Then, with a bit of luck (and sometimes depending on the skills and motivation of the person calling them back), that potential client may turn into a physical one.

But that’s the NORMAL practice.

What if it wasn’t down to luck? What if it was down to the interaction and genuine interest you showed in conversing with that client? Instead of just seeing them as another dollar bill through the business doors, they actually felt important to your business? That’s what Twitter offers.

Finding a company on Google (or any other search engine) is no different from finding that same company using the search feature on Twitter. And the inward communication regarding their needs? Imagine if the (potential) client could open up a two-way dialogue that was instantaneous and could cover everything in one conversation?

Instead of the customer service representative putting the caller on hold to ask sales a question, or check marketing’s latest offer, that department could be instantly engaged in the conversation with a Twitter “@ message”. And with the functionality of Twitter, even getting hold of someone out of the office is easy enough with Twitter alerts by cellphone.

Of course, there might be an argument that this is too simple a suggestion – there would still be the problem of the caller in question not being on Twitter. If so, put yourself in their shoes for a moment.

If you were a potential customer of a company and you were faced with a customer service line that may be engaged or a Twitter stream that costs nothing and is always open, which would you prefer? I know which I’d go for.

Of course, this is for the future – the immediate need is to convince your client or boss of Twitter’s value. So just ask them what offers more value than knowing what your customer base is thinking. What offers more value than answering concerns or questions that their customer base may have?

And perhaps most importantly of all, what offers more value than being able to answer these questions before your competitors answer for you?

The answer(s) should be simple.

How to Sell Twitter to a Client (Or Even Your Own Boss) originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

Image by ~C4Chaos via Flickr

I couldn’t help but notice that there’s a little bit of a discussion going on at Twitter at the moment with regards paid blogging.

As with any discussion, there are two sides that are equally as vociferous when it comes to their views on the topic.

The reason a lot of the discussion started was due to leading social media blogger Chris Brogan writing a sponsored post for K-Mart.

The gist of the argument on Twitter is whether Chris has lost any “value” because he wrote a review that was paid for. K-Mart gave Chris a $500 gift voucher and asked him to figure out what was cool to buy with it at their store, and then write about it. Seems straightforward enough, particularly when Chris himself even mentioned on the blog itself that it was a sponsored post, although all the views were his own.

As I said, where it gets interesting on Twitter is that there have been a few people that feel let down by Chris, and have either stopped following him or made their feelings clear that they’re disappointed. So it got me thinking about paid blogging, and if it does actually lose the reviewer any authority or credence because they’re being paid for what they’re writing.

Honestly, I don’t see what the problem is.

I’m a blogger myself, and I write pretty regularly. But I don’t do it for the money (if I did I’d be bankrupt!) – I do it because I enjoy the conversations that can then take place afterward. I love to write and when someone joins in and adds to the conversation via the comments after each post, then that’s one of the most satisfying parts of blogging. After all, I’m just the conduit – many of the comments are even more interesting than the post itself. It’d be nice to get paid, but that’s not why I’m here.

So I can see why paid blogging could be so attractive. After all, you’re still doing the same thing you’re always doing – writing – with the only real difference being that you’re actually receiving some financial outlay for it. And with the economy like it is, isn’t the ability to make some more money for your family – or, in Chris’s case, buy some Christmas gifts – worth it?

As long as the blogger is upfront and transparent about the post being sponsored, then I don’t have an issue with paid blogging. The bloggers I read, I’ve read for a while – you get to know their writing style and I’d soon spot if Chris (or anyone else) was writing BS. And if I thought that was the case, I’d be the first to call him on it.

But the fact that it was called as sponsored and there was no heavy sales pitch in the post itself? If people can make money on their blogs by writing sponsored posts yet still keep it honest, more power to them.

And for anyone that feels let down by sponsored blogging? I liken it to the indie band syndrome – the band’s great while they’re your secret, but the moment success and money becomes involved, you don’t want to know. Which begs the question – were you really a fan in the first place?

Paid Blogging and the Art of Transparency originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

(And you thought that stopped at high school.)

But you know, as fast as the world is and as unfair as it can be, we can still make it better in our own little ways. Nothing mind-breaking; nothing rocket science in nature. For example, this morning on Twitter I suggested this:

“Look at the first person in your Twitter stream and Direct Message them to say thank you for being a friend.”

Simple, easy and maybe just offering a little fun into our lives and the people around us. What was really nice to see was that people picked up on it.

If we can pick up on something as simple as this with people we may never have met physically, shouldn’t it be just as easy to do so with those we know? So let’s try it.

Look at the last “proper” email you received, reply to that person and say, “Thank you for being a friend.”

Look at the first name in your phonebook and call them to say, “Thank you for being a friend.”

Look at the first person on your Facebook friend list and say, “Thank you for being a friend.”

It’s easy to do. It doesn’t take much. Yet in a world that does its best to put us down at times, it can brighten up a whole day. And just so you know?

Thank YOU for being a friend.

It’s Nice To Be Nice originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.