Multi-accounts, Multi-posting, and You.

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Okay, there are many things that could be classified as a no no when posting or tweeting. If I listed them all in one neat place, maybe you'd spend five seconds looking at the list and perhaps you'd absorb one or two on the list. 

Makes more sense to give you just ONE instead.

So, here we go. If you are the proud owner or administrator of multiple accounts, don't do this:

Yes, it’s not one, not two, but THREE tweets at the same time. And yes, I heard your question: “Why not?” While I could give you a lengthy boring list, here are just a few items that come to mind:

• It’s spammy.
• It looks bad, plain and simple.
• You run the risk of being unfollowed because you look bad!
• It’s confusing to your tweeps.
• It doesn't demonstrate professionalism thus potentially harming your reputation.

Enough. You get the idea. And for the record, I had no desire to click on the link on these tweets! 

If you MUST tweet your message out several times using several different accounts (note this surely applies to two accounts and multiple posting on any given social network), DO use a tool such as HootSuite so that you can easily space out the tweets or posts! Ironically, the example above shows an incorrect way to use HootSuite!

Or, use your egg timer to post or tweet “live” at different intervals! Just kidding.

In the 70’s Grand Frank Railroad sang about bad timing (see below). Okay, they were singing about romance, however we think you’ll just love our offerings and you’re welcome to visit our website, or say hello on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.  

Fake Profiles, Twitter, and You

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We all enjoy a good laugh, no? You don’t have to be on Twitter to enjoy this little romp but if you are a Tweep you get to groan a little too.


Routine: I check to see who is following me once a day. And more times than not, I find myself not following tweeps back more and more. The majority of new followers seems to be MLM’ers, Rap Music aficionados, unclothed “babes”, people who tweet in Chinese or Russian, or tweeps who don’t even exist. One guy's bio beckoned me with a "hey bitch". Sweet.


No thank you, @mary647251 ...I don’t need your babble about not having a grip on your saddle and @sassyjenna60 no thank you to yet another link to a website that’s going to make me rich without my even flexing my pinkie.


I've been gathering up some of the more interesting profiles before I block them to share with you. First up is Sondra; she can free up your time so you can play more games (wow!). But dearest Sondra, did someone make off with your shirt?


 

Shortly after meeting Sondra, I couldn't help notice she was now going by the moniker 

Anette and enjoying a career change:

But wait! She appeared yet again, with a cute, boyish name and a proclaimed love for marketing and networking. And poor Randee! She appeared to have lost her previous job and was simply on Twitter to meet "interesting" people. I wasn't one of the interesting people that cared to meet her and at this point was starting to be concerned if perhaps she was feeling a bit chilly:

Randee already had over 1,000 followers and made 15 lists in her new career! I wish her well. BLOCKED.


Next up is Emily who likes to party and show cleavage in a similar fashion to  Sondra/Anette/Randee:

Wow, Emily...you'd follow ME back? What an honor! Can I send you a sweater? And this was before I met Brett the astronaut...

How I admire her ambition! Bet she's in Houston right now preparing for her dream date. And note, she doesn't want to be ON the moon...heck no! She's going to dig herself a little foxhole and snuggle IN the moon. You gotta admire her precise goals.


And last but not least, there's Margo who sports a bikini and loves to dance in a 60's style; do you have the boots that are made for walkin'? Wonder if Margo shares my admiration for mid-century modern architecture and furnishings too? 

Seriously...would you follow these incredible women back? Lots of tweeps do. My guess is that they have an auto followback set up, something I recommend that you don't do. Take time for a close look at your new followers. Nowadays, lots of them are people you would never tweet with, while many others aren't even real people!

They ARE good for a chuckle though, aren't they? Now, excuse me while I select BLOCK.

In honor of Margo and her pals, enjoy this groovy tune. 

Stop by, say Hi! There's the website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ ...and thanks for stopping by here.

Get Creative: Use Those Twitter Lists!

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Twitter lists have been around for some time now and when I mention them to friends and clients, most say they don’t really use them. Twitter even provides a primer to introduce you to lists, click here for that.

If you are familiar with the basics, let me point out a few more uses for them that go beyond the conventional reasons:

Use lists when building up your followers. At some point everyone has experienced that 2,000 follower “hurdle”. This is when you’re suddenly prevented from following more tweeps until you’re within a 10 percent ratio of followers to follows. Yes, it’s Twitter effort to slow down the spammers; otherwise they’d just keep following and following and following regardless of how few follow back.

Sigh.

Was discussing this situation with a client yesterday. I advised that he build up some more followers and get over the 2,000 hurdle. He is working hard at doing so. However, he stated “there’s plenty of people out there on Twitter that are in my neck of the woods (he is a local business) however, I really don’t want to follow them; not so sure I like what they are tweeting.”

My suggestion was to follow them and put them in a private list so that he can easily monitor them before deciding if he wants to hang on to them. He can choose to unfollow them once he gets over the 2,000 follower hurdle or keep them and remove them from the “I’m not sure about you” list.

Which brings up another point: Not all your lists have to be public. Private ones that are for your eyes only are great for monitoring your competition (when you don’t want them to know you’re paying any attention to them) or perhaps for catching up with a celebrity that really has nothing to do with your business and you feel it’s not good for your reputation to let people know that you have an interest in them. So go ahead and follow Ozzy Osbourne via a list in private then.

And did you know that you don’t have to follow someone to include them in a list?
Need a few ideas? Lists can be:

• Your favorite people, friends
• Your favorite businesses or products
• Tweeps in a certain region or city
• Tweeps that share a common interest with you
• Potential customers for your business
• Past and current customers for your business
• Celebrities that you admire
• Tweeps that post lots of quotes (perhaps they inspire you?)
• Current events and news (make sure they’re reliable sources)
• Foodies (we all do eat at some point, no?)
• Tweeps that make you laugh (we all need some comic relief sometimes)
• Causes you are interested in.
• Politicians
• Tweeps you tweet with on a regular basis.

And the lists go on!

Remember that when your lists are public, everyone can look at them. Do think about whether you want to show the world what’s on your lists or not. Any given list can be public or private and you can also change them if your preferences change in regards to display them or not.

The lists feature is there to make Twitter work better for you. Hope you’re inspired to explore the possibilities some more now.

Not a favorite tune, but it does have the word “list” in the title, plus it is Valentine’s Day so the word “kiss” is appropriate too. Have a lovely day! Click here for the video.

It's a Small Twitter World, After All.

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Do you go to tweet-ups? I do. Hey, I’m a people person and I like to yadda yadda. For those of you who may not know, Tweet-ups are simply gatherings of people who Tweet. Some good souls like to organize them. Lots of times, they're at a restaurant. And perhaps better yet, sometimes the food and drink is free. But you don't have to be a tweep to go; anyone is welcome. However, if you don’t tweet the likelihood of your hearing about a tweet-up event goes way down.

For me, tweet-ups are fun. It’s great to meet those you’ve been tweeting with “in real life”; on the other hand, it’s an opportunity to meet those that you haven’t "met" on Twitter. This year I've been to four or five of these gatherings; not counting!

But I'd like to discuss one in particular. Back in February, I attended a tweet-up about 27 miles from my home. Many of the folks there were people I had met before at other gatherings. This particular tweet-up was small, maybe 50 to 60 people, held at a restaurant.

After purchasing some liquid refreshment, I chatted with a few folks. Was feeling rather hungry and a long table had been set up in that area of the establishment just for us. I continued to chat with one gent, and invited him to sit down with me. We talked some more, then ordered some food. Meanwhile, the seat to the right of me was now occupied. I said to my new friend on the left, “Let me say hello over there for a moment”.

Turning to the right, I introduced myself. We started talking about that area of Southern California in a broad sense. As the conversation continued, the geography narrowed; shrinking from Orange County to Central Orange County, to a city, and then parts of that city. Imagine both of our surprises when we discovered that we lived around the corner from each other! Sadly, it has taken me close to nine years to meet my neighbor!  And now, six plus months later, if we’re together at a tweet-up talking to someone, we both start blurting out the story.

Indeed, it’s a small world after all. And Twitter is but one medium that has made it smaller.

Post tweet-up. About a week after, we met for a friendly neighborhood walk where we paused twice to show off our homes. Bob* has also cheerfully helped me keep my kitchen stocked with Hass avocados, fresh from his backyard tree. And since then we’ve saved on gas by carpooling to tweet-ups. Thank you Twitter!










* not his real name

To Block or Not to Block?

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Ah, what goes on with one’s Twitter account during the night? Usually, I see a lot of friendly mentions, follow recommendations, thanks, and so on when I review tweets during my morning coffee. I’ll RT some of them, thank the rest. But yesterday, while several mentions were left for me (at least twenty of them), I really wasn’t too pleased about who the tweeps where.

Actually, there were several accounts mentioning me, none of which I was following. They had different combinations of “alix”, “Cancun”, and “Mexico” in them. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Well, many of them had avatars featuring, well, is there something smaller than a g-string? I chose not to enlarge the avatar for a closer look.

Spent quite a bit of time blocking them all. Then, just to make sure, did a few additional searches and found more accounts associated with the ones that had mentioned me. Blocked those too. I then sent out several tweets warning others. And a few people replied; one even said they had found him too.

Speaking of scantily clad, the other day what looked like a woman in her twenties starting following me, with nothing but black tape placed horizontally in two places. I tweeted to her “get some clothes on girl; sorry, but I have to block you.” And blocked. What was she thinking?

Well, I’m just happy that all the Britney wanna-bees and beyond have pretty much disappeared from Twitter. How many times have you blocked those?

But perhaps a more interesting happening are those tweeps that follow and then unfollow you. Guess they’re trying to keep their follower count down. After the third time for many of them (yes, I do recognize a lot of them), I’ve tweeted to some and asked them why they keep following/unfollowing. Oh, you’re thinking, why do I do this? My curious nature combined with my market research background makes me question just about everything.

One gent tweeted back “girlfriend problems”. Really now? Then he started following me AGAIN. Two days later, unfollowed me. And despite whether or not he was following me, he constantly mentioned me in a tweet as someone to follow. And no, he wasn’t a spammer. Don’t confuse me tweeps; got enough on my plate; no time for shenanigans. He has been blocked.

I know some people automatically block those who have unfollowed. And this happened to me one time where I actually didn’t unfollow. Twitter must have “burped” that day. It was a tweep I didn’t want to lose. Luckily, I had her email address and wrote to her immediately. She was skeptical, but after some back and forth correspondence, believed me. We tweet often now.

When you block someone, they may never know about it, especially if they’re whammy-spammy tweeps. But this isn’t about revenge. It’s about preventing that person from becoming a part of your feed ever again. And take note, they can still run a search on you and still SEE your tweets; a not-so-happy reminder that Twitter is public. So, in essence, blocked tweeps never completely go away.

On a more positive note, you also have the option to unblock someone should you decide to “kiss and make up”. How many times have I heard from someone with an apology for blocking me in error? We’ve all done that, right?

My advice is twofold. One, if someone isn’t clothed up to your standards or is using language beyond what you are comfortable with, block them. Without a second thought. Two, consider others before clicking on block. Don’t we all deserve a fair shake? Are they a spammer? If yes, then block. Are they just a little lost in the Twitter universe and could perhaps use a little support instead of being blocked out of your life? After all, it’s a harsh world out there. Perhaps reaching out to them instead would benefit both of you.

Blocking could be viewed as an end. So you block someone. It’s done. It’s over. Kaput. But when you’ve been blocked, well, while I’ve cited an occurrence of unblocking above, that’s not “the norm”. Yeah, we’ve all been blocked. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth, for sure, since the “why me?” lingers on. And here’s the good news: It’s not important! All those tweeps that follow you and will follow you in the future deserve your attention so much more.