Ditch the Losers

A fellow online marketer recently gave me some great advice on Twitter. His suggestion was that we should "ditch the losers" in our streams. So I unfollowed him. Was that being a little too literal with his guidance? Maybe, but it just proves how careful you should be with what you write on social media platforms, especially when they're a source of business for you.

Honestly, the main reason that I unfollowed him was because everything he said was a catchphrase version of marketing happy-speak. In other words, if you have basic experience in online marketing or just an above-average amount of common sense, you won't get anything useful out of his posts. I get it already, water is wet. Obvious marketer is obvious.


Here is a shining example of one of his many genius contributions to the interwebs:

Now, watch how I can take the exact reverse of it and create a perfectly legitimate piece of "advice" as well:

That sounds perfectly rational, doesn't it? And yet, it seems to be in complete contrast to the tweet from Ronald. The reason for that is because neither piece of advice means shit.

Let's dissect Ronald's tweet in order to get an idea of where he might be going with it...

The tweet has 3 distinct sections:

• Engage all the senses

• in marketing

• when ever possible.

Engage all the senses

Don't we basically do that every day in every situation anyway? I honestly have no idea what it means, even in relation to the other two parts. How do I engage them? In conversation? Or is it more like how the Millenium Falcon uses its hyperdrive?  There are 3 definitions for engage on Dictionary.com for when it is used with an object. 

Whether or not your senses can be considered as an object is yet another mystery that reinforces the ambiguous nature of this statement. The first definition is obviously right out. The second would seem to make the most sense (no bolded puns intended) but like I said above, we use our senses every hour of every day, so that point is moot. The third, to attract and hold fast, almost works, except that it would be redundant. How can I attract or hold fast a metaphysical perception system whose singular purpose is to attract me and hold me fast to other things? It's a paradox.

Furthermore, the use of the word "all" is also redundant. There's no need to "Engage ALL the senses" since you never stop using any of them. You can't turn individual senses on and off at will without being conscious about it (e.g. plugging your nose, putting earplugs in, etc) and if you can then I want someone to teach me how to do that. 

I probably just put way too much thought into 4 words but hey, that's what I do.

in marketing

Considering that everything he talks about is based around marketing advice, there's seriously no need to add "in marketing". Doubly so for the fact that the first and third sections of the tweet still could go together and be just as relevant and effective a message. My first response to this was that he should have made the word "marketing" a hashtag instead, but apparently by the time I had written up to this part of the blog (an hour later) he had already done that in a similarly useless tweet:

To be fair, the tweet isn't completely useless. It does serve to get him into the advertising and marketing follow threads, but does it really provide any value for the follower? This particular tweet is stereotypical "Marketing 101" drivel. If you've owned a business and/or have ever done your own marketing, you get this concept without having to be told. Now I may just be holding humanity to a higher expectation of intelligence than it truly deserves, but if you really need this kind of reminder to understand that advertising ≠ marketing, then you probably shouldn't be in either of those fields, nor should you be handling it yourself if you need them.

I digress though. Case in point, "in marketing", totally pointless.

when ever possible.

It's sort of a bitch move on my part to put on the Grammar Nazi helmet (again) and point out that he's using the improper version of "whenever", but whatever. I think it's probably best to point out instead that most people, upon receiving good advice, employ it at any time possible. The way that this ending goes after the other two wraps the tweet up in a nice little bundle of social sewage that fills up the loser ditch real quick.

The blog has effectively come full circle. You may now commence drinking your Kool-Aid.

Confucius ♥ Twitter

By this time you're probably wondering if this scathing review of a simple tweet has any of its own advice to offer. I'm glad you asked. Here are my suggestions for how to properly use Twitter to gain a following for reputation or business purposes. You should only use a couple of these conventions at a time though, otherwise you'll just look like a spammer. Of course, if you are a spammer, feel free to use all of them simultaneously. 

They are also all based on how not to annoy me.

Link to Content

For the love of all that is sacred and holy (and 140 characters or less) if you are unable to sum up your message in the limited amount of space that Twitter gives you, link to a web page about it. If you are concerned that your links will take up too many of your precious characters, don't worry. You can use a service like Bit.ly to shorten your links manually, or just let Twitter handle it automatically. It depends on how much you're planning on measuring the metrics of these links. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then just let Twitter do it.

You see? It IS actually possible to fit a link and a complete thought into one of these puppies!

#Hashtags

Hashtags are Twitter's way of organizing content based on category. They are similar to the tags you would find in a blog, or the field names of an excel spreadsheet. They allow people to follow a theme or topic instead of a person (or your followers). Use hashtags only when it makes sense to use one (i.e. - when it is the core idea behind your post). Hashtags are a great way to meet new people with similar interests to you as well, which is useful if you use Twitter for business. It doesn't hurt either that, for some strange reason, using a hashtag makes your tweet convert better. 

It's best to try and only use one hashtag per tweet, but sometimes you can get away with 2 or even 3 provided they are part of the actual dialogue. A good rule of thumb is if you can put it at the end of your message, do that. Here's a good example of a tweet that utilizes both the content link as well as a hashtag at the end:

Of course, personally I would have shortened the link, but Design Modo has plenty of room to work with after the headline that refers to the content (plus the URL is branded). The #communitynews hashtag is one of their built-in post categories, which makes it easier for members of their blog to get an idea of what to expect when they click on the link. All of this contributes to a tweet that brings in more traffic and gets a higher rate of conversions.

@Mentions


When someone mentions you on Twitter, they use an @ symbol then your username. You can track this by looking for the link on your feed. You can also set up notifications for it on your phone. There is a million different ways you can tell if someone is talking about you on Twitter. Whether you care about anybody talking about you on Twitter is another thing entirely, but that's up to you.


Hold conversations with people using the @mention. Or don't, sometimes having a conversation on Twitter is like having a conversation with someone's answering machine. It doesn't always work and it feels weird when you're attempting it. You're better off using Facebook or Google+ for actual conversations. Or a phone.


All in all, using Twitter is a relatively easy process. It's a great platform for people who like to talk a lot, and it's a nice place to find others who share the same interests as you. It's also a great place to get advice, but only from people who don't sound like they're full of shit. The hard part is telling the difference. Just like the real world! So I leave you with this...

JUST BECAUSE IT IS ON THE INTERNET

DOES NOT MEAN IT IS TRUE!!!

Candidness

For years I've been puzzled at people's attempts to keep certain things under wraps. As someone who has lived his life under what I can only assume are honest intentions, the idea of keeping things from the people you trust has seemed like a foreign concept to me. That's why I still get taken a bit aback at the concept of being candid with others.

The unfortunate downside that comes with having to question consequences is hesitance to repeat the same mistake twice. That can be true of any outcome, regardless of severity. It has taken a good many years for me to separate probabilities from morals. I'm guessing that happens with at least some of you, I'd hate to feel like the only forthcoming person I know.

Of course, the occasional omittance is forgiven, or even expected in certain situations. Maybe that's the difference between myself and the vast majority of people. My sense of caution is turned down in the presence of truth (or at least what I perceive truth to be) because I figure the truth is never questionable. It's always a matter of perception, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly the most relatable person in the world, for one reason or another. I definitely seem to possess the empathy for such situations, but I believe my view of the situations themselves is skewed. Could be partially both. Who knows really?

I guess the point is, that no matter how you take in a situation, you're never going to witness it exactly the same as someone else. With that in mind, you need to take a delicate stance when deciding what to discuss with others. There are times when it can benefit you or destroy you, and there are times when saying nothing at all is much more prudent, I'm hoping to eventually figure all that out. Typically I have a gift for good timing, but nobody's perfect (especially with 4 or 5 beers in them) so the best you can do is have a good head for damage control. Sort of ironic really since the more damage you put in front of yourself, the better you get at handling it.

So fail early and often, as they say. Sooner or later, it pays off.

Internet Kismet

I think one of the more interesting things about Facebook is when I see two people, both of whom I have known for years but have never met each other, suddenly hooking up. I have narrowed down this anomaly's cause to be one of three potential possibilities:


1. Fate
2. The Butterfly Effect
3. The fact that I lived 25 years in a state with the 10th lowest population


Regardless of the reason, I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume this didn't happen as often 20 years ago, when the "internet" as we know it was just getting its wings to take dream, and social media meant seeing a movie with a friend. Hell, I'm living proof of the new way of things. I met my wife on MySpace.


Douglas Adams, who you may know as the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, wrote a lesser known series in which the protagonist solves crimes based on the interconnectedness of all things. That was back in 1987. If only he knew about what you could find with Google in 2011. It isn't even a radical concept anymore. Pretty much every existing thing that anyone knows about at all is on the internet in some shape or form.


The real question is whether or not this amazing development is the result of an evolutionary improvement or if it is even making us smarter at all. It's hard to look at a news feed or Facebook wall these days without thinking we've somehow taken a step back. And yet, there's really more to it than enabling the idiots en masse.


Will a swift insurgence of stupidity cause a decline in civilization? On the one hand, it's hard to miss the physical manifestations of it. Crime, ADHD, the Teletubbies, etc. These things are the by-product of a rapidly progressing species I think, so there's some hope that right now we're just evolving quickly and weeding out the crap as fast as we can. Can't get it all at the rate it comes at us yet. That could be wishful thinking too. I don't exactly hold out a lot of hope for mankind in general.


Despite that cynicism, it's still interesting to see what the internet has forced us into becoming: honest citizens. Everything from Facebook making us use (even WANT to use) our real names and destroying the idea of privacy as we know it, to the idea of employing a Google search to find a person's every misstep in life, people are starting to come around to the idea that we've built our own traffic cameras to catch ourselves with. That simple outcome at least gives me a chuckle since I can't tell if it's just completely ironic or destiny at work. Either way, we seem to have kicked ourselves in the mouth with a shoe full of crow. Strangely, for the better.