Twitter: Mass Follow, helpful, harmful or neither?

We all are marketers. Whether you want to admit it or not you are too. It doesn’t matter if you are marketing for dollars or acceptance of an idea, you work to gain attention, persuade and to influence. Its built into your nature. You can’t escape it. So when someone comes along promising you that some new program will generate 19,000 followers on Twitter in seven days or less, let’s face it, we’re both tempted.

Maki from doshdosh.com wrote a very interesting article commenting on Twitter’s new 1000 follow requests per day limit. He makes the point that all of us want something out of our twittering usually to gain traffic, make money, gain attention or make connections. He makes a distinction between low-value followers and those who give us their attention and help us further toward our goals.

Most people attempt to gain followers by following others. Many use auto-follow systems in order to automate that process. Maki points out the fact that this strategy usually produces a lot of low-value followers; followers that don’t really pay attention to you at all.

Maki introduces an interesting strategy that anyone can use to build high value followers and make effective connections. I found his thinking to be right on and very much worth a read. You can read his article by clicking here.

You also might want to read some of the comments on his article. One in particular describes an especially nasty use of automated tweets and false links to spam Twitter users. I was quite educated by that comment.

The follow/un-follow debate has been going on for quite some time. I have personally adopted the policy to follow only those I find interesting, provide high-value tweets and engage with me in conversation. I find Maki’s strategy of following influencers fascinating and might adopt some of it for myself. I’d be interested in hearing your opinions on Maki’s article. So please give it a read, then return here and leave a comment. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Picture by flicker user Carolyn Coles under Creative Commons License. Use of this picture does not constitute and endorsement by Carolyn Coles of the ideas in this post.

Have You Ever Just Wanted to Start Over?

Ever wonder what your life would be like if you could go back to say your high school days yet retain the knowledge you’ve accumulated to date? How would your life be different? What mistakes would you try to correct? What relationships would you keep, and what ones would you drop? This is a game I’m sure we’ve all played at sometime in our lives, which is why movies like “Mr. Destiny” and “17 Again” are popular.

Sometimes such thinking can be a fun diversion such as in the case of watching these movies. We chuckle at the fantasy and remind ourselves that even if we could start over again with the advantage of accumulated wisdom, we would probably just make a whole new set of mistakes.

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SNJ04-25-09: New Discoveries

Wow. I do not know how I missed this. There is a site on the Internet called All About Jazz. This is a comprehensive and huge site that covers just about anything you could ask for about information on jazz. Found it by subscribing to the Jazz Lovers Room on FriendFeed. Absolutely, fell in love with this site. A great jazz music reference. Been poking around there for a while and found some wonderful new female vocalists. Thought I’d share them with you tonight.

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Some Great FriendFeed Finds

As I said, for the next couple of weeks I’m playing with the new FriendFeed Beta so I’m holding off on the tutorials. However, because I’m a fan of FriendFeed, I’m wanting to share with you some of the discoveries I’ve made from some of the people and groups I’m subscribed to. So here are discoveries I’ve made this week:

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Managing TweetDeck Groups

I’ve been looking lately at some of the search terms that are leading readers to this blog. I’m using Woopra and WordPress.com Stats. Both are quite revealing. It seems that there are many who are looking for advice on how to manage groups in TweetDeck. They are wanting to know how to add someone to an existing group, how to delete someone out of an existing group, how to create new groups or delete existing groups. So I thought I’d give you a brief answer or two on how to manage TweetDeck groups.

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That’s Life. Deal with It.

Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Work Week” has a phenomenal post on his blog entitled “Stoicism 101 A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs.”

It’s a guest post written by Ryan Holiday who Ferriss says:

…is 21 years old and works directly with Dov Charney as his online strategist for American Apparel. He gets more heat, makes more high-stakes decisions, and take more risks in a given week than most people experience in any given quarter.

Holiday starts his article with the following:

For those of us who live our lives in the real world, there is one branch of philosophy created just for us: Stoicism.

It doesn’t concern itself with complicated theories about the world, but with helping us overcome destructive emotions and act on what can be acted upon. Just like an entrepreneur, it’s built for action, not endless debate.

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SNJ04/18/09 — Not Your Daddy’s Big Bands

My dad loved the big bands of his day. Gene Krupa, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller, Duke Ellington, etc. But his big bands weren’t the ones I grew up with. OK, I kind of did because I listened to his bands with him — and I liked them, a lot. Still, the one’s I grew up with were much more funky, powerful and modern. Here are a few of *my* favorites. These were definitely not my daddy’s big bands.

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FriendFeed Beta Changes Everything.

I’m going to hold off on the tutorials for a couple of weeks, because I’m playing with the new FriendFeed Beta site. My opinion so far is that it is a much better interface, but still has some learning curve issues. Therefore, I’m going to be playing with it for a little bit and then direct you to the beta site. I think you’ll benefit from that, especially if you’re new to FriendFeed.

In the mean time here is an interesting list of 500 FriendFeed Rooms. A Room in FriendFeed is like a group in FaceBook. It is a place where FF users can gather around a specific topic or issue. Conversations, links and pictures are shared with anyone who subscribes to that room. Rooms are really great resources to join on FF. I’m personally subscribed to rooms dealing with WordPress, Jazz, Science Fiction and others.

This listing is quite interesting. Not all the rooms are in English, but many of them are. I hope as you peruse the list that you’ll find some interesting ones to subscribe to.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with more FriendFeed info.

Why I Pay My Income Tax

Today there were a number of “Tea Parties” (protests over income taxation) all over the country. You may or may not have heard of these, but many people are fed up with the Government’s constant increasing of income tax at our expense.

Because the Tea Parties have been framed by the Main Stream Media as a “conservative” thing, many “liberals” got on Twitter today and started “tea bagging” the #teaparty discussion. There comments were mostly witticisms designed to ridicule the idea of legitimate protest of the income tax. Most were moronic and silly. After reading many of them I got fed up. Unthinking, unreasoning people who spout off without knowing what they are talking about sometimes push my button.

So I responded with my own set of witticisms. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. So, I’m human.

Anyway. I was asked if there was a place where all 11 of my responses could be found, so I created this post to provide such a place. Without further ado, here are my top 11 reasons for why I pay my income tax, listed in no particular order:

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Why do you Tweet?

Last week, Liz Strauss of Successful and Outstanding Blog(gers) wrote a very thought provoking post entitled: It’s Not How Big the Tool … It’s the Thought, Skill, Fluency, and Authenticity Behind It. In it she asks the question:

How do we help business become fluent in the social sphere while maintaining authenticity for us all?

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