Coffee on the Keyboard

If I could’ve sat down with Chris Brogan and Laura Fitton six months ago and asked them one thing, it would have been: “Who, exactly, are you marketing to?”

There has always been a small thorn in my paw about social media marketing. It’s the same thing that bothers me when people come on TV and promise to help make you rich. All you have to do is… sell a book that promises to make people rich! It’s the same feeling I get when I read Problogger and wonder: “Do I want to listen to advice from a blog about blogging? Would I do better to listen to someone like Jeff Atwood?” (more…)

Try these strategies to lose followers and waste your time on Twitter.

1) Have no name, photo, bio, or website.

Avoid looking like a real person at all, in fact. If you arbitrarily capitalize and ignore the 140 character limit, you can look even more like a robot.

These are at the top of your profile. The only things I know about you are your profile info and your last 20 tweets (last 4 or 5 if you don’t convince me to scroll down). That’s not much time to grab my attention and sell yourself to me. Don’t waste that precious “above the fold” space.

2) Follow 3,000 people before you bother updating.

This goes back to number 1. Bot-like behavior is definitely appreciated. It’s even better if you follow completely disparate people, like you just grabbed all the users off the public timeline for an hour.

If you have no followers and no updates, there’s no compelling reason to think you actually listen to any of those followers.  When you follow thousands of people, you’re devaluing every one of them. Yeah, there are some broadcasters who make a point to follow most of their followers, but getting @chrisbrogan’s attention is nearly impossible.

3) Never reply to or retweet anyone.

Make a point to ignore everyone you follow, especially if you follow thousands of people (see #2). If people think you’re listening to them, it gives them power over you.

If you think of Twitter as a one-way medium, you’re missing out. Interact with people and have conversations, or you’re slightly less interesting than a radio DJ. At least they take requests sometimes. Yeah there are broadcasters, @nytimes comes to mind, but if you think you’re the New York Times, you’re too delusional for me to care, anyway.

If you’re lucky, I’ll see 7 or 8 posts at the top of your profile. If none of those are replies, you might as well not not have any. Keep the dialog going.

4) Include Your URL in Every Tweet.

The two best uses of Twitter are to promote your own stuff and to drive up your Google rankings. Make sure every tweet has a link to you!

I will unfollow with extreme prejudice if I think your only goal is to drive people to your site. Twitter is not push marketing. Twitter is a community and a network. I will not visit your site, and Twitter puts rel="nofollow" on links. It’s a waste of time and its annoying.

Don’t share the same link over and over, don’t only link your blog, and don’t link yourself constantly. Do share good, new content, whether it’s yours or not.

5) Definitely Be Inconsistent.

Don’t post anything for two weeks, then dump seven or eight tweets in the space of an hour. It’s your job to keep your followers on their toes.

Whether I’m following you for fun (@dr_crane) or for information (@mashable) resist the urges flood and to go dark. Don’t be afraid to go to that meeting, take that long weekend away from the computer, or whatever it is that you do, but please don’t fill my entire stream when you come back. You really should keep some of those little tidbits in your head.

If you honestly discover 6 great things in 10 minutes, and want to share them all, then go for it. I’ll thank you. Short of that, try to rate-limit yourself.

That’s why I unfollowed you.

Why would you unfollow somone?

Update: #6. You sent an automated Direct Message after I followed you.

If I want bots, I’ll follow @nytimes. I don’t really care if it’s a “thank you” or a pitch: bots are annoying. Chris Brogan is right.

Twitter creates a powerful opportunity: no matter who you are, or how big your business, you can put a human “face” on Twitter.

Comcast (@comcastcares), JetBlue (@jetblue), Biggby Coffee (@biggbybob) and Starbucks (@starbucks), even Britney Spears (sorry, I refuse to link that one) have all shown up on Twitter with very real, human exchanges.

I’m not sure, behind the scenes, whether there are several people or one incredibly busy person at each of these companies, but they’ve decided to drop the corporate suit and engage their followers. They aren’t using Twitter as a broadcasting medium, but as a networking and conversation tool.

They get it.

Here is one of my favorite examples:

threeofus: @Starbucks Who actually types the tweets for Starbucks?

Starbucks: @threeofus Hi, I’m Brad, I work in the online team. How are you?

So what’s the trick? What did Starbucks/Brad do right?

• Use the First Person. “I,” “me,” “my,” all make your tweet feel more personal. No real surprise there. “We,” “us,” and “our” work, but not nearly as well. You sound like a spokesperson, instead of a person.
• Own the Conversation. By introducing and naming himself, Brad is taking ownership of the interaction. Even if Starbucks has 10 people reading and responding to tweets, threeofus can feel like she’s talking to one person.
• Engage. Read and respond to other users, especially @-replies. Read, retweet and share. If you’re only sending information one way, you aren’t part of the community. You can also use tools like Twitter search to find and respond to users talking about you or your company.
• Show Emotion. “This is so cool,” “Wow, long day” or even just “:-)” are all things that a person would say, but a press release never would. You don’t need to wear your heart on every tweet, but let some of your feelings come out—at least the good ones.
• Be Active. For most of us, Twitter is ambient information. You need to update regularly to get in to that stream.
• Don’t “Always Be Closing.” Don’t make every tweet a pitch or a request. That doesn’t mean you can’t pitch: I link my blog posts on Twitter, my friend @alecrj mentions his shows. But if every tweet sounds like an advertisement, then you sum up to an infomercial.

Here’s a comparison: Lansing’s alternative paper recently started twittering at @CityPulse. Right now, the biggest words in their tweet cloud are their URL, “city,” “pulse,” “check,” “out,” “pick,” and “up.” Every tweet is trying to drive me to their website or pick up a copy of the paper. They’ve sent no @ messages, used the word “I” once, and have gone a week at a time without updating.

And despite following almost 300 people, they’ve only got 100 followers.

This is what confuses traditional marketing about Twitter: the community won’t listen to you until you listen to the community.

Of course, there are robots on Twitter, too, and some are very popular, like @nytimes and @BarackObama. They are broadcasters, not community members. They perform very specific roles and are backed by very unique content. They add enough value that they don’t need to engage the community.

And yet, if they did, they would be even more powerful.

So do you and your company get it?

A debate has cropped up over “designed by” links, those (hopefully) little links a designer puts on a page to take credit and get themselves some traffic and customers.

On the one side, Pat Dryburgh argues word-of-mouth is superior to self-advertising: “If the design is good enough, they will ask my clients, and if they like me enough, then they will tell people about me.”

In rebuttal, Sophia Lucero at wisdump.com claims your “designed by” link should be like a Louis Vuitton logo: “Your brand should never hurt your creations, it should enhance them”.

To me, there is an issue of “ownership” to consider. If I put my name on something, I take responsibility for it as much as credit. My name means “I did this, I’m proud of it, and I want to be associated with it.” I think we’ve all done work we’ve left our names off, because we were rushed or a client demanded changes in spite of our best advice or… well, you get the idea: we weren’t proud of it.

So what do you do? Are you a “designed by” designer? Do you stick to code comments? What if you’re a back-end developer?

Edit: I should link Chris Brogan’s series on personal branding. It definitely applies to this question.