Shrill – Social Media Marketing for the Rest of Us

This post is translated (poorly and with a few impertinent edits) from a great post I read at a friend’s blog. (Thanks for allowing me to translate it, Han!)
Han Badalamenti, the guy who wrote this, is not a Social Media marketer. He is a Social Media user. He is one among the millions of social media savvy users you are trying to market to, one of the guys who you are planning to target with your Social Media strategy. He is writing to other users but what he says applies to Social Media Marketing as well
He, like many others in this environment,  knows what he wants and he knows that, when it comes to Social Media, he has a choice. He can pick who he wants to listen to. He knows what every Social Media user knows and so many Social Media Marketers seem to ignore.
Let’s hear what he has to say, shall we?

5 Reasons Why I DON’T Follow you on Twitter
This is a text for you that logs on to Twitter everyday only to see that the number of people following you is dwindling. If you are asking yourself: “what did I do wrong”, here are your answers.
My friend, here are the 5 mains reasons why the idea of following you on Twitter gives me the creeps:

1 – You post too much
It is extremely irritating to log on to Twitter and find the same name repeated 80 times in my timeline, with only a few posts from all the other people I follow sprinkled here and there.

I am sorry if it hurts your ego but I do not use Twitter with the sole purpose of reading what you post. When my timeline begins to look like you personal page, something is very wrong.It gets even worse if the above is combined with the following item on this list:

2 -You don’t say anything relevant

I know, nobody has an exciting life all the time. I am also well aware that the core of the Twitter concept is to use the tool to mainly answer to a single question: “What are you doing?”

However you, my friend, are taking this way too seriously. No one needs a detailed log of each and every one of your mundane and uninteresting daily activities. I don’t particularly care to know exactly when you are at work or at home. Out to lunch? I don’t care. Back from lunch? Please post something useful like “You’ve got to try this X dish from Y restaurant. It is delicious!” Spare me from twits like “bologna sandwich with diet coke… yum”.

Furthermore, twitting about all your social activities (snip) is a pain in the neck. Also, I do not need to know that all your friends are on Twitter with posts that have more @names than content. Ok I get it, you are popular and you have a life and I am probably jealous because I’d love to be like you. Now a quick reality check: nobody can be cool and a show-off at the same time.

Here’s a simple idea. Before clicking that “update” button, ask yourself this simple question: Do this tweet have any potential whatsoever to become a relevant piece of information, or even a source of amusement for any of your followers? Will it make them think? Laugh? Enjoy? Like it for any reason? Is it at least an honest attempt to accomplish that rather than a narcissistic tweet? If the answer is “no” or “I don’t know”, don’t click that button.

3) You pollute my timeline with replies

Picture the following: You are at a party, sitting at the dinner table surrounded by several people. In such a social situation you will often switch between talking to everyone in the table to addressing a single person or small group around you. When you are talking to everyone at the table, they will naturally expect that you talk about subjects that interest everyone or in which everyone can participate. If all you have to say is “Hey Diane, we need to get our nails done, How about Thursday?” you are better off talking to Diane alone without disrupting the conversation and getting everyone’s attention to address a single person. Get the idea?

Twitter is like the world’s biggest and most crowded and most flexible dinner table. One in which everyone can talk at the same time and still be heard. However, in an environment where the laws of physic do not apply, good manners and common sense become even more important.

The Reply feature is great when it comes to commenting or answering to a specific Tweet, Replies have the added bonus of appearing only in the timelines of the people who follows the person being addressed in the reply. And that is why you should not abuse the feature to chat with someone you know. Direct messages should be used or personal matters and conversations. Did you ever give them a try?

“Yeah, but then I can only talk to people who follows me”, you might say. Well, you can use email and Instant Messengers as an alternative. I mean… think about it. Somehow people use to hold entire conversations before Twitter. Heck! People used to have conversations even before the existence of the Internet! Can you believe that?

4) You flood …….. my timeline …….with …… incomplete …….. posts.
Make no mistake: the simpler the tool, the higher the number of people misusing it.
Instant messengers give you about 400 characters to say something.
However
Most people
Talk to you
Like this.
Using
Several
Separated messages
Until the sound
Of the “new message” alert
Drives you insane.
(It is more or less like that, only the content is usually grossly misspelled and so filled with intrusive emoticons the message becomes unreadable)
In Twitter however, the character limit is 140, and all of a sudden everyone needs to write long posts. Go figure.
Everyone was guilty of that at some point. It happens. But if you fo it often, it is time to publish a blog or start using Woofer instead.

5) Your overuse of meaningless hashtags.

Hashtags are stupid #thereisaidit
Their usefulness is questionable. You don’t need the “#” to transform an expression into a trendy topic – which also has questionable usefulness. Most of the time we only use it for fun, ending a post with a sarcastic hashtag like #ohreally, #rocketscience , etc…

It is quite funny when used with moderation. Obviously that is not the case nowadays. People hashtag random terms with no real purpose or ends every post with a “funny” hashtag .
If you are caught within the follow/unfollow Twitter dynamics and still following some obnoxious users just because they are your friends, send this to them. They might get a clue.

(My personal take on hashtags: Hashtags are highly valuable to organize content in Twitter and organize some people around the same subject.

For example:
During our annual convention, we used a hashtag to send updates via Twitter, to employees and customers of over 300 dealers worldwide. We had all the tree house team posting updates live and whoever wanted to know what was going on in the several events and seminars, only had to search for the hashtagged term.)