I went to grab a drink with Priscilla tonight and we reminisced how we first met. On Twitter, naturally, before we finally met face to face.
We were both bloggers then. Me and my random, ranty, nerdy blog with the food spin-off that was starting to go somewhere. Then I got a job in the produce industry and the blogging stopped. Both the food side and this side.
Why is it that when something you love to do as a hobby become your job, it wasn’t quite as fun any more?
A quick walk down the memory lane with Priscilla tonight got me thinking about both of my creations. OakMonster.com was launched in 2003, and Food.OakMonster.com started in January 2007.
OakMonster.com has always been aimless. No niche. No focus. It’s me talking about whatever hell I feel like talking about that day.
Unlike today when people start a blog with a purpose–building personal brand, showcasing thought leadership, sharing recipes, reviewing products, travel diary, etc., back then, blogging was an easy way to share thoughts and ideas online.
By easy, I meant that your other option at the time is to code your own website. Oh yes, my Geocities sites were pretty kickin’. I’d spend some nights coding away. But I digress.
First, blogging. Then, niche blogging. Then there are all the strategies. You need to get the picture added. You need to have keywords embedded. You need this, and that, and other to grow your Klout and influence, and…now you’re not doing so well and nobody wants to talk to you any more.
It’s starting to become harder to blog. It’s slowly becoming a second job. Eventually, I found other hobbies and I can enjoy and feel a lot less pressure to succeed. (Not everyone is going to judge a Slave Leia Harley Quinn, I’m just sayin’…) And the blogs were kind of abandoned.
This residence was built in 1912 in Bangkok. Now, a part of Asiatique, it awaits renovation. Does that sound familiar?
But I miss it. I miss writing. I miss spouting off in more than just 150 characters. I miss ranting about random things. I like not having a purpose. Or a niche. Or a measurement of success.
Can a girl just write and not aim to get a book deal any more?
If you say, “That’s what LiveJournal is for!” then you’re probably right. And LOL to that.
Also, I’ve been writing a daily gratitude post on my personal Facebook since the first of November. Sometime a story sprung out of that and became a bit of a blog post.
I started to miss blogging right about then. Sparks are starting to fly.
And tonight, without knowing that she did, Priscilla just added the kindling to those sparks.
This regularly scheduled blogging thing may be catching fire here.
But first, I’m going to fucking fix this mother fucking page.
I know I’ve missed a few Five for Fridays. But I was actually super busy this Friday, taking mad notes and fighting to get wi-fi connection at Social Media Explorer’s EXPLORE event (#gotoexplore). Southern California Media Association (formerly SoCal Blog Crush) invited a handful of us to attend this 2-day event, packed full of great speakers.
The Double Trouble from TEDx OrangeCoast, Resa (@resamichelle) and I, were back together for another round of event coverage and harmless twitter-heckling. Annette (@dananner) turned our duo into a trio which I renamed the Giggle Gaggle. But as the conference went on, the Gaggle’s online shenanigan grew to include many others. I’d Storify our antics but that will take a year to curate and will be a mile long of a story. 🙂
But even with all that joking around, I learned A LOT. Now that I have a few days to process all the information, here are the 5 things I learned from the conference.
Creating Killer Content
The content that moves people emotionally is the key to making an impact.
Peter Kim (@peterkim) said that people expect social media to make them laugh, make them cry, and make them famous. Joseph Heinl’s (@josephheinl1) pointed out that Boo the Dog on Facebook has 5.5 million Facebook fans, setting off the running inside joke for the rest of the event that puppies = best content.
Tim Washer (@timwasher) said that humor should be used in business communications because it evokes positive emotion, cuts through the noise, humanizes the brand, and shows authenticity. He also said this.
Then came the entertainment panel where one of the panelists mentioned that if you want more Facebook “likes”, you need to show a picture of Channing Tatum shirtless.
And finally, Jason Falls (@jasonfalls) talked about creating “Holy Shit!” content. Holy shit, that was funny! Holy shit, that was gnarly! Holy shit, what the fuck was that?! If it makes you go “Holy shit!”, it has made an impact.
Applying all that we learned through out the day, there could be only one content that rules them all.
Holy shit! It’s shirtless Channing Tatum, holding a puppy while riding a shark!
You’re welcome, internet.
They Ask. You Answer.
Marcus Sheridan (@thesaleslion) should’ve been our post-lunch speaker. Dude is one can shy of a 6-pack of Monster, full of energy…and win. He shared his success story and a very simple guide to market by.
They ask. You answer.
People go to the internet to find solutions to their problems. If the people can’t find what they want on your website, they would not stick around. To make sure people find you and stay put, you need to answer ALL of their questions, not only just the one YOU think they should know but the questions THEY would ask when they do their research.
Marcus cited an example of how he put together a list of the best businesses in the area without even mentioning his own company. People do search for Company A vs. Company B, after all. And when they do, they land on his post. At some point, his post gets even higher ranking than his competitors! Oh yes, counterprogramming works here too.
Larry Rosin of Edison Research (@edisonresearch) pointed out that there is an emerging trend that people who seek a company’s help on social media want to be answered almost immediately. (See full study PDF here.) Not only do you have to answer the question, now you have to answer it very quickly. Businesses should commit to the expectation of immediacy or cease operations, he said.
They ask. You answer….and do it NOW. It’s going to be an interesting journey for everyone going forward.
Find Your Cheerleaders
Courtney Seiter (@RavenCourtney), Tamsen Webster (@Tamadear), and Rob Fuggetta (@robfugetta) all touched on cultivating your brand’s champions.
You need to LISTEN. Stop “talking” for a second and find your real fans. Engage them. Listen to their conversation about your brand–not just mentions. Reach out in a personal manner. Reward the behaviors you’d like them to repeat and amplify their interaction with you to others. Make it easy for people to say nice things about your product and share with your friends.
From my experience as a Fresh & Easy uber fan and Starry Kitchen loyal, I can tell you that when they make me feel like a friend, not just another customer, that’s when they get all of my attention.
During the fireside chat, Kred’s Andrew Grill (@andrewgrill) pointed out that people don’t listen to ads when it comes to making their purchase decision. They listen to their friends–online and off. Andrew and Jason introduced the concept of “dark social”, the influence on social media activity by someone who is not on social media. For example, how Andrew’s wife informed him of a social media promotion she saw on the television. You have to think about everyone, not just who’s plugged in.
“Dark social” also illicit a quiet maniacal laugh from me, Frau Blucher style, that sent Resa into a fit of giggles. I just can’t help myself…
Social Media is a Layer
Larry Rosin also said that social media is not a channel but a layer–it sits on top of all other media.
You can see the proof of that in everything nowadays. I’m looking at my soda cup from a fast food chain, and there’s a QR code on it. Magazine ads have links to twitter and Facebook. Television shows have a hashtag in the corner. You can find extra content can be found on YouTube and share with your friends.
And of course, there’s also the “dark social”.
(Sorry. But it must be done.)
Social Media Pros Are Not All Nerds
I don’t know why I would assume that social media professionals would also be sci-fi/tech/pop culture nerd like me. They were clearly not and it was made abundantly clear through out the conference as Annette, Resa, and I would laugh, hoot and holler, and squee at things that nobody else seemed to understand.
Like when Robert Rose (@Robert_Rose) mentioned the Kobayashi Maru.
Like when Tim Washer showed this Cisco Valentine’s video which is funny over all. But it is particularly funny to some of us who are married to tech guys because this could actually happen. Annette concurred.
And like when Jason was citing contest by this tool shed company as a case study. The Gaggle were just whispering among ourselves that it would be so awesome if the TARDIS shows up. Not a moment later…
Hello, sweetie!
Naturally and delightfully, we squealed. Pièce de résistance, Jason thought we were cheering on for “this cool police box”.
*sigh* Muggles… 😉
But you know, it takes ALL KINDS in this social media field. That is what make being in it so exciting.
EXPLORE is going to Portland next. I highly recommend it. These guys know what they’re talking about.
ETA: I will continue to add recaps from a more trustworthy source than myself below.
Every time I hear someone say that people are less connected now because of the internet and social media, I want to tell them it’s because they’re doing it wrong.
Since I started playing around on Twitter, I’ve met some interesting people and made great new friends, and even found some lost ones along the way.
Some of these people I have even a better relationship with them now that we can stay in touch much more easily. Most importantly, my connection to my friends and family in Bangkok has never been stronger.
My current visit to Bangkok so far has been one of the most adventurous trips yet. My dance card is more or less full everyday as I hang out with my friends and reconnecting with those I’ve lost touch with years ago. It would not have been this way without social media.
Before Facebook, it was difficult to connect with friends whom I have not spoken to in a while, and it was even more challenging to arrange to meet in a group.
And here I am, running off to lunch with people I have not seen in several years.
For example, there are two girls I used to take tennis classes with who eventually became so good of friends I’d get to hang out at their house for days on end in the summer. I haven’t seen them since I left for the US (although they are now friends with my oldest brother) almost 20 years ago now. And I’m having lunch with them Friday.
Another sibling team I will reconnect with on Thursday were once close friends of the family. Our dads worked together and our moms became good friends. The oldest brothers went to high school in England together, and I went to English immersion program with the youngest brother with his middle doing the same thing at a school nearby. Everyone grew apart. But I found them once more on Facebook. Guess who’s running out to lunch at the brothers’ restaurant on Thursday?
And then, I get to hang out with–and hopefully meet some–people I have met and became friends with over the internet. I got to watch Glee finale with Kitty, my darling nerdling of a little sister and she took me out to dinner. We are trying to get some other Bangkok tweeps I have “met” online together for a tweet up next week. It would be such a treat.
Finally, the most important connection of all is to my family.
With two older brothers, it was hard to know what they were up to as they are not entirely chatty. But now I get to follow their lives along instead of being left in the dark as I have been most of the time.
I’ve reconnected with my cousins who had moved away and then ended up in New Zealand. And I’ve also found a few cousins on my mom’s side whom I wasn’t all that close to growing up and a few nieces and nephews from my father’s side I had barely met.
My mom’s best friend, Aunty Sida, ever the Coolest Aunty On the Planet, has been “playing Facebook” for sometime now. She’s doesn’t post much but she posts a lot of photos especially through Instagram. This artsy aunty needs an Instacanv.as shop! It’s great to see all her–and her group of friends’– adventures.
And of course, the last to join the social media fray, my father. His executive assistant has to check his Facebook for him and she still does his posts. However, now that dad has an iPhone, he browses around himself! And boy does he look at his phone every time it dings!
As a matter of fact, I taught him to use Instagram yesterday. See?
If you use social media correctly, it doesn’t stop you from going outside to play. It doesn’t make you a robot. It may not be the paper birthday cards or 2-hour phone calls it used to be, but it doesn’t make relationships less meaningful.
Recently, I found myself cursing at how corporate social media playing field has become. Folks are talking brands, driving sales, being all business-like. Nobody is actually interacting any more.
Whatever happened to the SOCIAL part of “social media”?
I believe in the SOCIAL in “social media”. I believe in connecting with people and sharing my ideas online. I believe in building relationships that lasts and engaging people in what I do and/or am interested in.
I’m a Social Media Purist. There, I said it.
However, today it seems the real relationship is being eaten up by companies and individuals faking one so they can sell their wares. Actually, some companies don’t even fake it. They just use social media as just another broadcast medium.
As a social media early adopter—well, hell, I’ve been working on “virtual community” when it was all just message boards!–the slow death of interactive medium at the hands of “The Man” pains me. I’m sitting on my internet porch, yelling at these Social Media “Professionals” to get off my goddamn lawn.
But this is where the social media is today. That’s a fact. Sadly. Social media is more of a miracle cash cow and sales generator than a virtual playground and relationship connector it started out as.
By not focusing solely on driving results or generating sales, Social Media Purists are viewed as digital hippies, kumbaya’ing about starting a conversation, building a community, and sharing ideas but not bringing in any money. We are the undesirables.
My philosophy is still of a Purist, but I’m not so naïve to think that social media is never going to evolve into a moneymaker.
Social Media Pragmatists are born out of this evolutionary step.
I am a Social Media Pragmatist professionally. I still believe in making the connection, but I am flexible and adaptable enough to work my relationship building magic in the corporate environment. As a matter of fact, I believe most Purists have turned into Pragmatists now. It really is the only way to survive in the business world where everything is going toward social.
As the Purists slowly dies off or morphs into the Pragmatists, there seems to be a disturbing surge of people I called Social Media Poser-fessionals.
These are folks who are in social media purely for business. Strategists and consultants who make a living in social media but don’t really live a social media life. They have all of these accounts because they need to know how they all work but they don’t really participate in any of it. And suddenly, not having the passion for social media or any relationships with the community may not be a problem anymore as long as the sales are going up and up.
And that pisses me off to no end.
I came across Jason Falls’ article from 2009 which served as a wake-up call to the Purists. While he still believes in the Purist philosophy, he wants to point out that if you’re not sales driven, your Purist ass in on the line. And he’s absolutely right about that. Social media is now all about the bottom line; it’s no country for Purists.
That brings me back to the title of this post. Piqued your interest, didn’t it? According to this part of the infographic on how to create compelling content (which does have some great tips), it is a great strategy to lure readers to your post.
I just reader bait to be ironic. This (and strategy #12-#17) is exactly something us Purists would roll our eyes at. As a matter of fact, it’s what launched me into this rant. But then, I realized it actually isn’t all that ironic at all.
As I ranted on, it dawned on me that Social Media Purists *are* really becoming the proverbial unicorns. The Purists live only in a fantasy land full of magic of how social media brings people together and dreams of sharing experiences and connections.
Deep down, I am one of these Purists/unicorns. I’m keeping the magic alive on my own time.
My blog is not really monetized. Making money was never really my goal. I have Google Ads for years just in case I get lucky, but I never once received a check. And so it goes that my blog is not written with SEO keywords in mind. My posts are not designed to be reader bait just to have a glut of people stopping by for fabulous-looking stats.
Heck, I barely look at my stats!
My blog is not a showcase of my professional expertise or a crazy project to launch my future career as a local expert, or an online anthology of my future book. While I have 2 other topic-specific blogs (Food.OakMonster and Temple of Fresh&Easy), I’m a generalist blogger with a fangirl slant. Just out here, yapping about whatever strikes my fancy.
I’ve long ago stopped paying attention to my Twitter followers count or how many posts I have. I’m more worried if I go a day without striking up ANY conversation with anyone. My Twitter isn’t all about my awesome social media skills or how I can help your business. It’s me spouting off about everything I’m interested in and it’s not always PC.
Yes, I have a personal brand. But that wasn’t something I cooked up recently so I can make my blog famous. It has always been the one and only OakMonster. Being me *is* my personal brand since college. Ask anyone.
The Pragmatists probably think I’m silly for not taking advantage of my social presence. But this is me, staying true to my social media unicorn self. I’m in it for the spirit of sharing and relationship building. I’m in it for the Social.
I’m happy to report to you that I have finished cleaning up my client’s following list from over 3,100 down to just a little under 400. There is still some fat to trim and some tweeps to start following, but overall, we are off to a great start.
Since I’ve gone through thousands of accounts, I came across many profiles and tweeting styles that baffled me. Some of them, in hindsight, I should’ve just taken a screenshot of as a lesson for all. More than anything, I have learned so many things about what one should NOT do in a twitter profile.
Twitter handle, avatar, and profile can tell you a lot about the person/account. Much like how you’d make sure you look professional before you head out to meet a client, your business twitter profile should be as professional as you are. You don’t need much for your profile to grab attention and not be considered junk.
Pick an easy to type and remember, and short and sweet handle
Remember that your name takes up character space when people mention you in their tweet. Signing up for @MyBusinessReallyRocksYall, while descriptive, might not be the best idea. At the same token, condensing into something of a license plate cypher makes it difficult for people to remember and to understand. Say, who would remember @MyBizRllyRoxYll. Also, make sure to spell things correctly. I came across a twitter account for a local news tweets that spelled the town’s name wrong in the handle. @LosAngelees_news_alerts. Now, that’s the news you CAN’T trust.
Change your profile image right away
Not in a few hours. Not tomorrow. CHANGE IT NOW! Even some dedicated spammers change their profile images right away–mostly with someone else’s image stolen off the internet. But if they even take time to fake an identify, why would you want to go around tweeting like a lazy spammer?
Write your 160-character profile in full and check your spelling
The 160-character profile is the ultimate elevator pitch. Sure, you can be funny, ironic, and/or cryptic about yourself on your profile as long as casual lurkers can get a gist of who you are. If the lurkers can’t glean much from the profile, it’s likely that they’re not going to stick around. There were numerous accounts I deleted because their profiles told me nothing and their tweets weren’t clarifying that for me either.
Be clear and concise as to who you are. Check your spelling. And resist the urge to excessively use ALL CAPS, #hashtags, special characters and other ASCII art (seriously, that’s ANNOYING!), and Text/Chat language.
Sidebar: Condensing the tweet into text/chat language is my pet peeve. I’m an advocate of spelling everything out in my 140 character tweets as well as in my profile. If you can’t spell everything out in the space allotted, then your message has just missed the point of twitter.
And one of a very good profile example I could think of is this. Forgive me.
Short and sweet twitter handle. Non-Egg avatar. Concise, yet funny, profile description. Dare I say it? Winning!
Since I was going through so many twitter accounts. Some of them emerged as spectacularly bad profile. Eventually, I started tweeting them at #YourAssIsGettingDeleted. (I know it should be “unfollowed”. But “deleted” is just more satisfying…)
Some of these accounts fail to follow basic the criteria I mentioned earlier. Of course, which account you think is appropriate or not to follow, that’s totally up to you. But I mean, some of these SCREAMED to be deleted.
Your ass is getting deleted if…
YOUR PROFILE INFORMATION IS IN ALL CAPS JUST IN CASE NOBODY PAYS ATTENTION.
Your avatar is the Twitter Egg. No, I don’t even care if that the account is spammy or not. No avatar, no follow.
Even worse, your avatar is STILL the Twitter Egg despite the fact that you have been using the account to tweet regularly for a few years.
But worst of all, the above account is for an “established marketing company”.
While billing yourself as a marketing “professional”, your avatar is of yourself, shirtless, looking very Jersey Shore “guido”.
Your twitter handle is a jumble of letters and numbers. (Usually accompanied by the Twitter Egg avatar.)
Or in 1337 speak (that’s “leet speak”, the geeky way of spelling by substituting numbers for letters). I mean, SERIOUSLY? Who still DOES that?!
When every other, if not all, of your tweets, you use the word “c*nt”. Profanity in tweets is one thing. I swear on twitter on and off myself. But that was too much.
Your profile says “Follow me and I’ll follow you back”.
Or “I like to enter sweepstakes”.
Or “I like the share links to discounts”.
Or “I’m one of the coolest people you’ll ever meet”.
Or “I’m a kind of a hipster”…which no real hipster would admit to that.
But I digress.
Have you come across any twitter profiles that qualify for the #YourAssIsGettingDeleted list? Share!
For this past month, I have been freelancing as a community manager for an advertising agency. My job here was to interact with the community especially on the much neglected Twitter.
I found it odd that there was so much junk and spam on their feed. And then I realized that this account was following over 3,100 people.
And yes, the account was indeed following spammers, bots, fake accounts, and random people it should not be following.
It seems that at one point in time, this account had an auto-follow set up where an application would automatically follow whoever follows your account, indiscriminately. On top of that, at some point, someone decided to just follow anyone who mentioned the brand, or perhaps tweeted about being at the same convention where the brand was exhibiting.
Some people–and businesses–don’t think that WHO they follow matters. Some are under the impression that the more people you follow, the more people would follow you back. We all thought that at the beginning. It is a classic newbie mistake. I’ve done it myself when I first started. But then you quickly realized that by following everybody, you have cluttered up your twitter stream so much so that you can’t seem to keep up with all the information you wanted or the conversation you wanted to get in on.
As a company and a brand, who you follow matters. Actually, it also matters for personal users too. For examples, CNN has over 3 million followers but it is only following only 565 accounts. Even the King of Twitter himself, Ashton Kutcher, with over 9 million followers, only follows 687 accounts.
If you follow Tom, Dick, and Harriott coming through the door, that leaves you with a Time Square ticker tape of an incoming feed which makes it difficult to really get any information, let alone interact with your community.
People you are following should be those you actually want to get information from and those you would recommend to others, like your business partners, your favorite news sources, or even your competitors.
As for my client’s account, not only following 3,000+ people unwieldy, it was full of junk. So, I took it upon myself to scan through everything and start unfollowing…or deleting, really…people off the list.
There is no rules anywhere that you have to follow someone forever. We’re no emperor penguins here, folks. We don’t “mate for life” with the people we follow. You can unfollow people you’ve been following.
Some of the criteria I use is more specific to the account, but for the most part, the most important rule of them all is this to follow people you know or want to get to know.
D’uh, I know. But some folks keep forgetting that.
You want to follow people you are interested in getting information from. You want to follow people with whom you interact on a regular basis, or have had interacted with once or twice but proven to be someone you are interested in.
Once every a couple of months, go through your account and see who you are following. Do you remember why you’re following these people in the place? Do you even remember following these people? Have those people interacted with you recently…or ever? But more importantly, do you still want to follow them?
If the answer is no to any of those, it’s time to clean house and unfollow some people. Or as I’ve been saying for the past few weeks: delete their ass.
Don’t feel guilty about unfollowing folks. You’re getting rid of the clutter so you can get back to making real interactions and sharing meaningful information.
And you and your account will look good doing it too.
Now, by the time I had gone through about 1,000 accounts, I’ve grown frustrated–at at times amused–by people’s profiles and the interaction from seemingly professional accounts. As a way to get myself through the day, I started to share some of those gems as #YourAssIsGettingDeleted.
We’ll cover those and the tips of what NOT to put on your Twitter profile in the next installment.
