10 Ways to Deal With Social Media Gone Awry
I had the bright idea this week to create a second Twitter account for myself, one to separate my ‘personal’ account from one that represents my ‘professional’ persona (don’t laugh please … it’s a work in progress). Dovetailing on this thought was another idea to see if and how I could measure follower trends — and perhaps more importantly, the relative meaning of having Twitter followers in the first place.
For @nvbob, my personal account, I’ve wielded a mighty ban stick recently, whereby I have closed the account to the public stream, I’ve limited my followers and reduced the numbers of those who I follow. With @bobconrad, which I set up on Sunday, I followed hundreds of people right out of the gate.
The results: Within days I had more than 30 auto-replies in my @bobconrad Direct Message inbox and more than 250 followers, which is far more than I ever had under my @nvbob account. Altogether, the aggressive trend to follow others had the effect bringing on 265 new followers, despite having, as of this writing, only posting a mere 21 updates.
Based on this trend, I decided to create a very simple research project. I posted a link to this article about social media run amok: http://www.searchandsocial.com/seo-blog/stop-high-level-social-media-speak/. I posted it from both my @nvbob and @bobconrad accounts at the same time but with different short links that linked to the article.
What I wanted to know was if my new followers, despite the dozens of friendly — and frankly, very annoying — replies welcoming me to the Twitter fray, would yield more, the same or less clicks through to the article.
The text on both tweets was the same: “Excellent article on social media gone awry: (link).”
I then waited overnight to review the results. Using Tr.im to create the short links, I was able to measure the clicks from the same tweet from two different Tr.im accounts. The ratio of clicks versus followers is:
@bobconrad (the new account)
256 followers
9 clicks to the article
28.44 to 1 ratio
@nvbob (my old account)
83 followers
10 clicks to the article
8.30 to 1 ratio
As you can see, the volume of followers is negligible when you have spent time weeding out your less-important contacts versus playing the “I’ll follow you if you follow me” game. Cautiously, I think these results demonstrate the idea of appropriate targeting rather than jumping onto the social media bandwagon with guns blazing.
With that in mind, here are 10 tips on how deal with the bombardment of frivolity social media brings forth, as well as general recommendations on how to best manage the onslaught of what is becoming mind-numbing banter and information overload.
- Stop responding to email. Pick up the phone and call back instead.
- If you really want to have a discussion, invite the person out for lunch – better yet, beers after work.
- Consume passively. Read sites, view images, watch videos and so on – but don’t respond to what you are reading or viewing.
- Again, don’t respond. Responding to others encourages dialogue. The Internet, using social media, is often the wrong place for that as the discussions are increasingly vitriolic and/or shallow.
- Follow people on Twitter using their RSS feeds rather than through Twitter’s follow feature. Doing so will allow you to read their updates on your time and through your own system versus Twitter’s never-ending stream of digital diarrhea.
- Setup different email accounts (using Gmail) for different purposes. Filter email that you know for sure will be sent to you, such as newsletters, Google Alerts and so on. For example, I set up a work Gmail account so that all Google Alerts, Help A Reporter Out emails and other emails are auto-filtered there to be consumed at my convenience. Also, those emails filtered to never show up in my Gmail inbox.
- Consume as much as you can — news, blog posts, etc. — through RSS feeds. I use Google Reader. Click the “Mark as Read” button often and liberally.
- Delegate your information consumption to someone else who can filter it for you.
- Put your information dissemination and consumption tools in one place. I use iGoogle for managing input (RSS, Twitter, Gmail, etc.) and I have a Ping.fm account to transmit output to the various other sites where I have accounts. More than 90% of what I need can be managed within two clicks.
- Finally, measure your efforts. Online media offers the benefit of seeing instantaneous results, as the above example using Tr.im shows. Is your output maximized to increase the ratio of success? If not, consider changes to your system(s) until your output is achieving a better return on your investment.
Jim_S
1 year ago
I don’t know if the scientific method really jibes on this one. I think it also depends who you are relative to what your followers have an interest in … Lance Armstrong has a ridiculous # of followers and every time he posts a Twitpic he gets thousands and thousands of clicks (and if his bike is stolen, they put it on CNN!). Guy Kawasaki on the other hand spams the hell out of his followers and probably only gets a minimal response per link.
Soooo … does this test measure simply the number of people who will click a link when they see it? Ooooor, if you spent some time cultivating your new account, creating a reputation for good content, would you not see growth in click-throughs? … I just don’t know if this is apples to apples.
As an aside, I can’t say I participated in the test: If someone has more than one Twitter account, I will only follow one … not even Lance Armstrong can get me to follow two accounts.
bconrad
1 year ago
You are exactly correct. Comparing apples to apples would inherently yield similar results. The idea with most research is to compare two (or more) things, one treated differently than the other, to see if in fact a difference exists.
Jim_S
1 year ago
You’ve given me no choice but to stand by my previous statements and hope that no one notices my flawed logic and lack of reason.
Ari Adler
1 year ago
Regarding #5…I hope no one new to Twitter believes it’s the way they should do things.
Having someone’s Twitter posts sent to a reader so you can read them on your schedule completely removes the social interaction and conversational tone of Twitter — which is what makes it so powerful in the first place.
What you suggest in #5 is akin to having someone attend a cocktail party for you and record all of the conversations going on. It’s not the same thing and should not be sold as such.
bconrad
1 year ago
People have been delegating tasks for eons, including going to an event in someone else’s stead. It’s one way to get things done efficiently.
Ari Adler
1 year ago
There’s no doubt that people can delegate tasks, including having someone attend an event. I’ve attended events for bosses and reported back. They heard what happened, but had no idea of the context of what was really happening. They didn’t see the interactions occurring; they weren’t there and people knew it. My being there representing them counted, but not much.
It’s the same on Twitter, and why politicians and others who think it’s “the place to be” but never actually go there will never understand it and should be outed whenever possible.
bconrad
1 year ago
I agree one must present a genuine front online, but, again, managing the large amounts of increasingly mindless information requires due diligence. Using RSS is but one way (of 10 I mentioned), and there’s no saying you can’t respond once you’ve read something in a reader — it’s just a way to isolate a stream for easier consumption than trying to filter hundreds of tweets from hundreds of people you follow.
Wolfy
1 year ago
Ari,
In bobs defense, sometimes the nuance of the social context of the twitter stream isn’t important and interactions and conversations are overrated. Search any of the tier 1 through tier 3 social media douchebags and you’ll find a lot of single reply conversations and very few regular conversations. We all have the people we like to talk to and play catch up with the rest.
I’m not going to follow anyone’s twitter account in an rss reader though.
I also have a second twitter account and i don’t give a rats red ass if jim follows it. I use it to filter out the good contacts from my main account so the people i feel i should follow don’t drown out the people i really want to follow. It’s private and I block people and don’t follow back people i don’t know even if i know who they are.
-M