Posts tagged business relationships
Stop hiding behind “snarky”
Jan 21st
One of my pet peeves is this whole “snarky” thing.
I often see people excuse away their unprofessional on-line behavior by saying “Well, I was just being snarky.”
Since when is it acceptable to be rude, sarcastic and dismissive to other well-meaning, professional people? We probably wouldn’t act that way in a face-to-face interaction but somehow in the bizarro world of the social web, it’s OK as long as you call it snarky. Inexplicably, it’s usually the more experienced bloggers who hide behind this position, and seem to be proud of it. They wallow in their snark.
Gratefully, {grow} has usually been a snark-free zone. The folks in this community take accountability for their thoughts and words and don’t hide behind euphemisms. Thank you.
As for those who mask cynicism and cruelty behind snark, grow up. Be accountable. Be a leader. Set an example.
Whew. That felt good. : )
Addendum: The day after I wrote this post, I saw this quote from American entertainer Conan O’Brien, commenting on his emotional exit from the Tonight Show: ”I hate cynicism. It’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
8,000 Twitter followers. Now what?
Jan 20th
Something amazing has happened. I have nearly 8,000 Twitter followers in eight months. How does somebody maintain a meaningful presence on Twitter with a crowd like that? I’m a work in progress, but here’s what’s going on with me. Maybe it will help you too!
First, after I block out the creeps, I consider it an honor to have somebody follow me. Sure, they still might be trying to spam me, but my underlying assumption is that a new follower has genuine interest in me and I generally follow them back. I want to treat anybody who follows me with respect. My intent is to connect with you if you sincerely want to connect with me.
The wave of noise
Obviously there is no way to have a meaningful dialogue with 8,000 — or even 1,000 — people. It is a wave of noise. As my followers grew, I realized that I was simply not going to be “engaged” with most of them.
The compromise is, I try to stay engaged in a meaningful way with anybody who makes an attempt to connect with me through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or (gasp) the real world. I manage this through Seesmic (or Tweetdeck, take your pick). I have segregated lists of people who connect with me and I try to watch their activity and support them as much as possible. If you make an effort to engage with me, I’ll put you on one of these lists so I can hopefully get to know you and engage. I truly want to help and support people in my audience any way I can, whether it is tweeting, reading your blog, or having a chat about a problem.
Everybody’s equal
In my Twitter World, even though you may be one out of 8,000, everybody has an equal chance at dialogue. I generally follow back — now it’s up to you! I also make an attempt to engage in some way with new followers, especially if I see something in their profile that indicates a common interest. In general, if people connect to me, we stay connected.
I also maintain a Seesmic list of the folks I consider to be thought-leaders from a wide range of disciplines. Learning from these great thinkers and having access to them is one of the best benefits of Twitter, in my opinion.
I have not used public Twitter lists for two reasons. First, I don’t see an advantage over the lists I’ve already built on Seesmic. Second, I don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. If I had a list of “B2B thought leaders” and one of my followers wasn’t on it, it could hurt their feelings. As I said, bottom line this is about respecting people. I know there is a real person behind that little picture and you are amazing in your own way.
What’s next?
This strategy seems to be working for the time being. Can I maintain relevance with an audience of 10,000 or 20,000? I’m sure I’ll have to adjust and I’ll probably have a new post to write you at that point!
In the mean time, I would appreciate your feedback. What issues do you face with your growing list of followers? What ideas do you have that can help me do a better job staying connected with you?
Love notes from the social web
Jan 15th
A lot of social media content elicits “rants,” “vents” and snark these days. But today I am overwhelmed by the positive feelings flowing from the blogosphere. Let me back up a step.
This has been a difficult couple of weeks. I have been very sick, had a string of daily technology disasters, and the perfect storm of critical customer deadlines. By today I am exhausted.
Then this amazing thing happened. I started getting all of these little “Follow Friday” love notes. About every 10 minutes or so my computer would “ping” with an unsolicited little ‘atta boy. I think maybe 30 or so floated in with very touching and generous sentiments on many of them. How did you know I needed this today?
Did you ever think we could live in a time when you could get 30 love notes from people you’ve never met?
Even more important are the growing friendships I am developing with you. When I see your comments on my blog, tweets or Facebook posts, I get a smile on my face because I think of the special relationships I’m developing with so many people, and it has been so powerful and unexpected.
I began on Twitter eight months ago. In that time I have:
Collaborated on videos, articles and books with Rebel Brown, Ben Hanna, John Bottom, Jamie Wallace, Robin Frank, Shane Mac, Neicole Crepeau, Kimmo Linkama, Jayme Soulati, Anne Giles Clelland, Jenn Whinnem, Venessa Miemis, Nancy Scott, Rebecca Denison, Michael Winn, Jeremy Victor and Steve Farnsworth.
Started working on customer projects with Steve Dodd and Jeremy Floyd.
Donated to charitable causes with the inspiration of Danny Brown, Billy Mitchell and Kacy Maxwell.
Created a video (you’ll see it soon!) with Michelle Chmielewski.
Wrote a case study with Nathan Dube.
Provided potential new business opportunities to Trey Pennington, Nitin Gupta, Tim Knight, Stuart Mease, Lisa Foote, Michele Linn, Rebecca Renner, Christina Kerley, and Rebekkah Hilgraves.
Received new business opportunities from Nathan Egan, Lisa Worley, and Leil Lowndes.
Worked through problems on phone calls and meetings with Jason Falls, Dianna Huff, Olivier Blanchard, Joseph Fiore, Christina Kerley, Gavin Baker, Karl Yeh, Dean Holmes, Jen McClurg-Roth, Dan Levine, Sidney Eve Matrix, Gregg Morris, Bill Sledzik, Jennifer Yeager and many others.
In less than a year, there been nearly 2,000 comments on my blog from hundreds of people. Thank you so very much.
If you’re not on the list and we’re connected, it’s just a matter of time until we find some way to work together. Let’s make it happen!
Thanks for making {grow} the greatest community on the social web.
P.S. I’m sorry if i missed somebody. Remind me and I’ll add you to the list!
The social web is starting to feel like high school
Dec 30th
A while back I wrote an article about the fortress-like tendencies of the A-List bloggers and the sycophants who follow them. I compared it to an exclusive country club.
But as I’ve reached a wider audience and gained more experience on the social web, I’m learning that some of the online behaviors deserve even less credit than that. A couple of anecdotes:
- Last month I met with a high-profile blogger/speaker who said he had been “black-balled” by those following Chris Brogan (not Chris himself) because of disagreements he lodged with the uber-blogger.
- Another top blogger told me conference speaking invitations had dried up since he criticized fellow A-list bloggers
- I recently politely disagreed with a number of high-profile folks … who promptly “unfollowed” me on Twitter
- One follower implied I was chauvinistic because I had more men than women on one Follow Friday tweet
- A nasty and unprofessional online fight recently erupted between East Coast and West Coast factions over the issue of social media credentialing.
- Recently, a well-known social media pundit named me as one their favorite bloggers. One of my followers said she now had a “moral dilemma” of whether to follow me or not because she did not like the other blogger.
Pardon me folks, but doesn’t this sound a lot like high school? Or worse.
The petty politics of every day relationships are exacerbated on the social web because we are making very limited assessments of people based on their written words. People seem quicker to judge, and harsher in their reactions without thinking about the real live human beings behind those little icons. I’ve been guilty too.
In the end, I can only be accountable for myself. The social web mantra of “authenticity” and “transparency” is a load of crap. Nobody is truly authentic. Nobody is truly transparent. Nor should you be! However, there is an urgent need for civility, tolerance and honesty in this space. I’ll try my best to walk the talk in those areas and if this makes any sense to you, maybe we can support each other and make the change together.
Thanks for hanging in there through the rant. You may now return to your social media high school home room, wherever that may be. : )
Community alert: Sean Williams, a regular contributor to {grow}, pointed out this timely WSJ op-ed piece on the subject of social web civility. Which was a civil thing to do.
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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