Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 20: With Guest Host, Cathy Brooks

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Last Thursday I had the opportunity to try out a guest host on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show. My usual partner-in-crime, Jennifer Leggio, was originally supposed to be on a plane during our normal Thursday time slot although her plans changed and she ultimately ended up sticking around. This led to some funny podcast-a-trois when we invited Jen to call into the show during the last 10 minutes.

In Jen’s place, Iwas lucky to have the talented and socially adept, Cathy Brooks, as my guest host and fortunately, she did not disappoint. Cathy and I had met a few times before in real life (SXSW and Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character Conference in NYC) so I had a pretty good sense of her style. To that end, Cathy’s wit and charm helped as we stuck to the shows regular format — and in this case, brought on TWO guests versus our normal one.

We kicked off the show with our usual “featured social network.” In this case, it was social travel site, Tripit, a site that I am a big fan of. As a side note, the folks from Tripit were doing a good job “listening” and reached out to me after the fact to ask if I might be interested in interviewing their co-founders. Suffice to say, you’ll be hearing more from the folks at Tripit in the not-to-distant-future.

Our special guestS (yes, two of them) were none other than Gradon Tripp and Meg Fowler, founders of Social Media for Social Change, a great organization that applies the best of the world of social to the non-profit world. Gradon and Meg not only talked about how their organization had raised a decent amount of cash for good causes but how they were also helping other non-profit organizations harness the power of social. If you haven’t checked out one of their events, keep an eye out for their next event in Miami Florida called @sm4scmiami.

The featured “Twitterer” of the week was Allstate’s Ben Foster. As I was talking about the reasons I liked Ben’s Twitter style — great mix of human and business — he chimed in on Twitter with this hilarious quote:

@aaronstrout Sweet! But now I feel pressure to have smart tweets and not things like Wolf Blitzer T-Shirts and Zombie Wedding Cakes 🙂

And finally, we wrapped up with our traditional point / counterpoint… this time with a focus on social advertising. Of course Cathy and I couldn’t resist bringing Jennifer in for this portion of the show so we had a fast and furious three way dialogue about whether companies should or shouldn’t be advertising on places like Facebook. If you want to find out who chose which side, I guess you’ll just have to listen into the last 10 minutes of the show.

Check out other recaps of the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show either here on Stroutmeister.com or on Jen’s ZDNet blog. We hope you’ll listen in live next week!

Can you judge a book by its cover?

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The title of this post asks, “can you judge a book by its cover?” You can when the “cover” is the front page of someone’s Twitter account and you’re judging whether to follow them. That page contains an avatar image (usually the person’s photo), a short biography (no more than 160 characters long), a link to the person’s home page (or company, blog, LinkedIn profile, etc.), and — crucially — the most recent 20 tweets that the person has sent. You can click through to see more tweets in batches of 20, but if you follow many people on Twitter, doing that often takes more time than it’s worth.

And there’s the rub: if you want more people to follow you on Twitter, you have very little time to make a good first impression on them . . . but many ways that you could string landmines of the “Don’t Follow Me” variety across their path.

Recently four heavy Twitter users — Meg Fowler, Jim Storer, Aaron Strout, and Tim Walker — got to talking (on Twitter, of course) about the poisoned words, phrases, and other cues that automatically signal “Don’t Follow” for them. The end result was that the four decided to bang out a joint blog post that talked about best practices in not following based on not liking the proverbial “cover” put forth by fellow tweeters. Here’s what we came up with:

Tim Walker’s “not follow” strategy

  • “MLM” (multi-level marketing). I’m sure that somewhere, some nice person who does MLM could explain to me how it’s not a veiled Ponzi scheme. Until then . . . you’ll pardon me if I continue to think of it as “a veiled Ponzi scheme.” No thanks.
  • Tweets that include “buy followers” or “hundreds of followers” or anything else in the “get lotsa followers!” genre. I try hard to earn new followers by being relevant, interesting, funny, and personable. The idea that you would buy yours in bulk — much less promote that process — disgusts me.
  • Political ig’nance. I follow people of all political stripes, from all over the world. But if you have to wear your politics on your sleeve, and if your politics are of the knee-jerk type (again, regardless of your leanings), I just can’t stand to follow you.
  • Calling yourself a “visionary” or “expert” or (shudder) “guru.” It’s much better to say you’re a “marketing veteran” or “experienced sales leader” or whatever. Let *others* call you a visionary.
Meg Fowler’s “not follow” strategy (cross-posted on “friend” Gradon Tripp’s blog)

Love it, Tim.

  • For me, it’s more about “who do I need to block around here?” Because no one likes to be spammed. So if I see any of this in your bio and/or first 20 tweets…
  • Requests to “follow me back!”
  • Promotion of affiliate programs
  • Actual affiliate links as the link in your bio
  • Any mention of followers (“I can get you followers!” “Get thousands of followers!” “5,000 followers and growing!” “This program will get you followers overnight!”)
  • “Make money online (from home, easily, doing practically nothing, overnight, with my system, etc.)”
  • Promises to “generate” anything: money, cash, followers, success, creeping rashes…
  • Promotion of tooth whitening programs (Seriously?)
  • A mention of your Twitter Grader Rank
  • Mention of “Sponsored Tweets”
  • Mention of your “Twitter eBook FREE JUST CLICK HERE”
  • Presence of “69” in name (or “Shelly Ryan” as your name… poor, poor real @ShellyRyan)
  • Rockstar/Maven/diva/coach/thought leader/guru/expert/pro/maverick
  • Porn-star-like attributes in avatar or links (Nudity, actual sexual acts, clear intent to seduce me with something other than words)
  • Requests to click through to “see your profile”
  • Googly-eyed “Twitter Basic” avatar (upload a photo, PLEASE)
  • @ing people the same link OVER AND OVER

Jim Storer’s“not follow” strategy
I’ve never auto-followed anyone, which at this point means I’ve vetted (to varying degrees) nearly 3,500 people. Until recently you had to click through to a person’s/bots profile page to get the skinny on who they are. Now some of that info is available in the new follower email, but what I look for is the same.

  • Following to Follower % (you’re following dramatically more people than follow you) – If this is too imbalanced there’s something fishy and I’m not biting.
  • # of Updates to Followers/Following #’s – In the last six months I’ve started to see a lot of people with 5k+ followers/following and less than 100 updates. That suggests you’re just using a program to rack up followers and that just wrong (IMHO). I’m not interested in being another notch on your bedpost.
  • If your bio includes any of the following I’m not interested: “more followers”, “make money”, “expert” (at anything), “MLM” and everything else Tim, Meg and Aaron came up with. I trust them.
  • If the words you chose to describe your pursuits in your biography are overly loquacious I will not be inclined to follow you back. Get real… use real words and tell me who you are.
  • If you haven’t written anything in your bio and/or you haven’t added a photo, I’m not following you.
  • If you have zero updates how am I supposed to know what you’re going to talk about? I’m not listening until you start talking.
  • If your last few updates are repetitive and too self-promoting, I’m not interested in seeing that day to day. I already saw what you have to say when I was checking out your profile.

Aaron Strout’s “not follow” strategy

The upside and downside of going last is that 1) all the good stuff has been said but 2) it leaves less stuff for me to say. Out of the list above, I’m probably the most lenient of the four. Like Jim, I’ve never auto-followed (but have considered it) so that means that I’ve hand followed back nearly 9,000 people (yup, that’s a lot). However, I have a few basic rules that I follow:
  • In most cases (not all), I like seeing a picture. If someone is obviously a n00b who looks to be figuring things out, I’ll cut ’em some slack. Otherwise, they don’t make the cut.
  • I need a bio. Is it too much to tell me what you do?
  • I also need a tweet or two (unless they are a friend of mine and then of course they get the free hall pass)
  • No “get rich fast, affiliate or “let me sell you some shit” in the bio or last few tweets.”
  • One I get stuck on a lot is the news feed/blog title posts. These really depend on follow ratio and quality of the tweets. It also is up to my mood. If I’m hand following 40-50 people, these folks usually make it in. If it’s 4-5, not so much.
  • I will follow ANYONE from Austin (pornos excepted)
  • Oh yeah, I don’t follow webcam girls or known pornos.
So what’s your strategy? Who do you or don’t you follow? Share your tips in the comments below.
photo credit: library.cornell.edu

Experts in the Industry: Meg Fowler (41 of 45)

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As I mentioned in this morning’s Experts in the Industry post featuring friend, Jennifer Leggio, I am tickled to death to have two of the smartest AND funniest women in the socialsphere on Citizen Marketer in the same day. The second of these two lovely ladies is none other than blogger and co-founder of social media for social change, Meg Fowler!

I distinctly remember that when I first started following Meg, the first thing that caught my eye was her about me page. Most bloggers I know try and keep their bio’s light and even funny but Meg took hers to a whole new level. In particular, the fourth line from the bottom of her bio said it all. It reads, “I probably like hockey more than you do.” How could I not read/follow Meg after a statement like that?
With that as a backdrop, find out how the woman who “probably likes hockey more than you do” answered the five questions from the Experts in the Industry series:

In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I help people get their message across more effectively, by distilling their thoughts, concepts and ideas into words — and I’m good at it because I drink my weight in coffee each day. 

How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
I think my first online community was Orkut — I started blogging at Salon.com, and someone invited me to join. And although my time there was pretty short-lived, being conversational in ANY space is a natural inclination of mine. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that’s the case. 

And I’m sorry.:-) 

I’m not one to join every social network or platform, though — I pick a couple and invest as best I can, instead of getting all overwhelmed by all the spots that need updating. I do Facebook and Twitter, primarily, along with my blog at MegFowler.com. 

If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?
Well, I think I owe Twitter right about that much money because I met the love of my life there (not to mention a bunch of clients and several fantastic friends.) 

I *should* probably wait for a business model to emerge, though the idea that they’d just fritter it away on donuts is appealing to me in some way (see what I did there? That pun? Yeah. That’s why I’m so good.) 

Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
I really loved Paul Newman, actually. He possessed a fantastic combination of talent, conviction, humility, and fierce intelligence that changed the landscape wherever he chose to get involved. 

He worked hard, he loved his family, he was up front about his beliefs and ideals, and he changed kids’ lives… without ever being arrogant about his success at any of it. 

He was also incredibly funny and ridiculously handsome — and I can’t say I mind either of those qualities in a man. 

Would you join a toothpaste community? Why?
I sat staring at this question wondering whether it was literal — a community about toothpaste — or you were using some new buzzword for a type of community. 

Then I tried to think of what kind of community would be called a “toothpaste community”: a super-fresh one? One that squeezes the emotion out of you? One that leaves a great taste in your mouth? One in which you can never take back anything you gush out? One recommended by 4 out of 5 dentists? 

Then I smacked myself in the head. 

I’d join a toothpaste community if one of my friends created it for a brand and needed support — I think that’s probably the only reason it would appeal to me. Though I bet I could chat it up about toothpaste as well as I could chat it up about anything. 

In fact… Crest: holla back at your girl! 

Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.

“People are more fun than anybody.” — Dorothy Parker

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