This get-together has been over 5 years in the making (we had never met in person), so Michael Port and I decided to film us chatting about one of our biggest online pet peeves: being asked to speak on telesummits. Have a look:

The moral of the story is: Get to know people before pretending you know them. Do you have any stories of being approached or trying to run a telesummit? Do you have rules on what ones you’d speak for? Let us know in the comments!

Michael has a new version of his famous Book Yourself Solid program coming out. See that link in the last sentence? It’s not even an affiliate one. I don’t make a cent off of you signing up and improving your business. Michael is the best there is and I’m happy to spread the word, proud to call him a friend and gitty I got to finally hang out with him.

Scott BC (before coffee)

I have a morning ritual that I know many of you share. Coffee around here is a bit like a religion. You choose your brand, you pick your favorite, and then you stick with it. In the Toronto area, Tim Horton’s is the church of coffee. It is a part of the culture up here, part of the vocabulary. When you say you’re going for coffee you go to ‘‘Tim’s’’ or you’re going to go to ‘‘Horton’s’’

I’m sure you have your own coffee chains in your area that have the same kind of following. They become a part of our routine. This has to be the ultimate goal for a business, whether it is service- or product-based. Work to become a part of somebody’s routine. If you can, it is worth an incredible amount of money. The lifetime value of each and every somebody who spends $2 a day with your company is incredible. Think about that for a second—$2 a day equals more than $700 a year. Over 10 years you’re looking at more than $7,000 in revenue from one person. Companies have a vested interest in making sure you become a ‘‘regular’’ and you should be working hard to make your customers lifelong clients. Unfortunately, just like many personal relationships, when you become used to one another you take each other for granted, and companies do this far too often with loyal customers.

Tim Horton’s had me. I was loyal as could be. But recently I have done something I never thought I would do. I changed brands. Being a loyal Tim Horton’s customer, almost every day I would go and get my coffee from them. I didn’t even think about it—that is just what I did. When any other coffee company came into the area, they were an afterthought. No way a new company was going to change my habit.

Slowly something happened. I started noticing cracks in the armor of my habit.

One misstep or one small issue will not lead to somebody changing a day-to-day habit. But when you begin to add up enough of those small things you open up the door to your competition. It is not usually extreme customer service issues that drive people away.

So here is the story of the small things that led me away from Tim Horton’s. First, the servers wouldn’t stir my coffee. The coffee was inconsistent, a small thing, but one that I know my fellow coffee drinkers out there will understand.

When you buy your coffee at the drive-through and start to drink it after you’ve pulled a mile or two away and find that it was not made or stirred properly, the experience is hurtful. For people like me who take three sugars in their coffee and order the same coffee every day, I really do notice the difference when it isn’t made properly. Similarly, when there are mistakes in the order, when I can taste cream instead of milk, when there is sweetener instead of sugar, your customer will notice. These are little things. Mistakes happen, of course, but when they start happening more and more your customer begins to wonder if this is how service will always be. Then the customer begins to doubt the quality of your service or product. This doubt creates a space where your customer is open to try something new.

Got gap?

Picture the image of a gap. It starts as a tiny crack. Your loyal customer has always been happy with your product or service and then slowly small doubts add up and cracks begin to form. Until one day, the experience gap grows just big enough for one of your competitors to get through. The experience gap is the space between the best experience your customer has had with you and the worst. Ideally this gap doesn’t exist or is as small as possible.

Businesses need to make buying their products easy. This was another issue with Tim Horton’s that led me away from being a loyal customer. The company does not accept debit card payments. So their customers cannot pay for their coffee and doughnuts with a bankcard. This is rare today. As a matter of fact, the only reason I would ever take money out of the bank was so I could buy coffee from Horton’s. (I think the only two businesses in the world that do not accept bank cards are Horton’s and drug dealers. Although I think some of our local drug dealers here will take checks.)

Now the extra inconvenience of taking out cash was okay when my coffee was perfect, but adding this to the frequency of mistakes in my order was getting to be too much. Add in some other things I put up with in the name of my favorite coffee, such as the cumbersome lid that was impossible to open while driving, and the long wait times, and I was really open to the competition. I had been a loyal customer for 20 years. I figured that over the past 20 years I have spent upward of $15,000 with the company. I was at that point where all of these small negative experiences had come together, the perfect storm point, and I was open to give something else a try. It takes a lot for somebody to change anything, let alone change a part of their daily routine. I didn’t really do it consciously, it just happened. All that it was going to take for another company to earn me as a new customer was quality that matched what I was used to and that gave me more convenience.

Enter in McDonald’s.

I was already a McDonald’s fan. The company didn’t have to begin at the start with me or get me to buy into its brand. But I didn’t buy coffee there. My first real job was working at McDonald’s when I was 15. As far as I could see back then, the only people who bought coffee at McDonald’s were senior citizens at six in the morning. But now McDonald’s was on a mission to prove that its coffee was worth buying on its own, a bold task considering the market already included heavy competition from Horton’s and Starbucks.

A few years ago I wouldn’t have even thought of trying the McDonald’s coffee let alone of switching over to it, but I had gotten to the breaking point as a customer. I was willing to at least try something different. Tim Horton’s was taking my business for granted, but McDonald’s was working for it.

McDonald’s had a promotion to launch its coffee and it was giving out free coffee to anybody during certain a certain time. So this was going to be the time I was going to try it. Unfortunately the lineup of people to try the coffee when they found out it was free could have rivaled lineups for rides at Disney World. So I decided to hold off on giving it a try. A few weeks later I finally went in and tried it.

Compared with Tim Horton’s, McDonald’s had the same, if not more, drive-through locations, just the kind of convenience a lazy man like myself was looking for.

At this point the quality was important—no matter how much convenience or customer service I got, at this point if the product wasn’t of the quality that I liked I wouldn’t switch to it. This is really important to note, quality is always important! No matter how much marketing or UnMarketing you do, it doesn’t make a difference if your product or service doesn’t stand up. So I order the coffee and go to pay for it and the server takes my bankcard! I am allowed to use my bankcard to pay for the coffee—McDonald’s earned one bonus point.

I get the coffee and I see that the coffee cup is double walled— meaning I don’t have to put a sleeve on it! I don’t have to ask for a second cup! McDonald’s execs have spent some time thinking about their products and their customers and thought, ‘‘Hey, coffee is hot, people don’t like to burn their hand’’ and come up with a solution—a double-walled cup. Genius.

I went to open it in my car and the lid was amazing. You can open it with one thumb and it pops and locks open—no mess, no burned fingers, and another bonus point. The ease and convenience of the cup itself really improved my experience.

The location near my home also has a secret weapon. His name is David. At the Iroqouis Shore Road location, in Oakville, Ontario, David is the guy you talk to in the morning in the drivethrough. He’s kind, considerate, happy but not the ‘‘in your face’’ that makes you hate him in the morning. Heck, he even makes the add-on suggestion of a muffin a pleasant occurrence. It’s gotten to the point that I will go out of my way in the morning to have David serve me. Great service and a great new product. I never would’ve even known if it hadn’t been for the ‘‘dropping of the ball’’ from the where place I was loyal.

This is exactly what your company does not want. You do not want your long-time loyal customer be dissatisfied too many times and now in the hands of the competition and very, very happy. I then tasted the coffee and it tasted great.

I get no reimbursement from McDonald’s to say that I am not their affiliate. In all honesty, the coffee tasted great, even better than what I was used to. That did it. And now I look for McDonald’s when I’m wanting a morning coffee or on the road. I may be just one customer but my lifetime value is $20,000 or $30,000. How many people will it take for Tim Horton’s to realize that understanding the needs and wants of the marketplace is a good thing to do all the time?

You need to know if your customers are happy, and if they aren’t you need to know why and how you can change it. You need to know where you stand in the eyes of your customers. Are they happy, are they ecstatic, or are they just there holding on until someone better comes along? You do not want your brand to be in that zone with current customers where the experience gap has left a space for the competition. You cannot be complacent or inattentive leaving your hard-earned market ripe for the picking.

Do you have any stories about switching as a customer because you felt taken for granted? Add it in the comments below!

And if you pre-order UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging” now for 34-37% off you’ll also receive, at no extra charge, two hugs, 3 fist bumps and a high-five! 

(Fellow Canadian/Horton’s folks can pre-order here )

Holy monkeynuts.

That’s roughly 5,000,000 characters of typing, assuming an average of 100 characters a tweet.

And it’s been worth every one of them.

So the question is why? I’ve practically written enough on Twitter for five books, am a member of the 50/50 club (50k tweets, 50k followers) (I totally just made up that club right now. You’re welcome. I’m like the Jose Canseco of Twitter when he joined the 40/40 club in baseball, except I doubt I’ll be making an appearance on celebrity boxing anytime soon)

It’s not the fact that I’ve spouted off on Twitter 50,000 times, it’s the content of those tweets. The majority of them have been conversations. If you take a look at my stats you can see that almost 75% of my tweets have been replies. Over 37,000 of my tweets have been points of conversation. That’s why Twitter works for some and not for others. Twitter is a conversation.

I know, I know “TWITTER HAS NO RULES” and flippity-flo, but the point is if you believe that business is built on relationships, you have to make building them your business.

Here is a visual representation of my most commonly used words for those 50,000 (using Wordle through TweetStats)

“Thanks” “awesome” “good” (ok, and “Vegas”. Did I mention I’m opening keynote for BlogWorld in Vegas in October? Just be there)

I joined Twitter to get to know other business owners. It wasn’t to directly create business revenue, but if you’re great at what you do and connect with other great people, business is bound to happen either through joint-ventures or direct sales. People ask me all the time “Ya, but is Twitter worth it for my business?” Do you think I’d hit keys over five million times if I thought it was a waste of time??? I’m not a lonely guy. I have friends. Twitter has just enhanced that even more to where the people I know now through Twitter has made my life and business better exponentially.

The point that’s missed is the time it takes. Have a look at this graph of my number of tweets per month and take a wild guess to when I started seeing great results through Twitter:

Social media doesn’t change the fact that relationships take time. You truly do get out of it what you put in. It’s tough at the start. You can see by the chart I was barely around at the beginning. You have to have faith in the conversation. it seems like no one is listening at first, but trust me, we all are.

And I’ve finally changed my opinion. I don’t think everyone should be on Twitter. It can’t be forced. I don’t want people who hate the idea of “talking about nothing” trying to make Twitter work for them. Get out of our Twitter pool, you’d probably just pee in it anyways then complain about the temperature.

To all those that do believe in talking with each other, I adore you. Thank-you for making my life, both business and personal better than I could have ever hoped for.

Here’s to the next 50,000. Oh, and here’s to Vegas too

(Note: to make your own Wordle visual graph of your tweets, you have to go to TweetStats and run your account analysis (it’s free) and then click on the tab at the top that says “Tweet Cloud” then near the bottom right choose “Don’t like the TweetCloud? Well then, go make a Wordle!” and choose “no @’s” so it removes people’s user names so you can see just the words you’ve used. Then come and let me know in the comments your most used words too.)

Yesterday I spoke at Digital Leap, a “Digital Conference for Non-Profit Marketers and Fundraisers” where I talked about Social Media Success for Non-Profit. The entire session is below. I’ve also created an iPod/iPhone version for those that would like to watch it on the go. Just right click here and save it and then pull it into iTunes! (Big file: 160 megs)

Feel free to embed or share/save the below session, I would only ask that you link back to this post. That would be awesome of you.

That little book I wrote is available here for pre-order (34% off to boot!)

To download it, or the embed code, drop by the main Viddler page

A PDF version of the slides can be grabbed here

Enjoy! And comment below if you’re in the industry and what you thought and/or if you have any specific questions.

Please stop.

You’re steering people the wrong way.

You sell yourself as social media consultants, the ones that can show you the way and then fark it up.

I beg of you to stop.

Go back to teaching Internet marketing from the old days, I could at least ignore you then. I talk to you at conferences, share the stage but I can’t listen to you up there any longer spewing “tips” that hurt people and their relationships.

Here is what I and many, if not most of the world, request of you to stop immediately when teaching “Facebook Strategy”:

Photo by the awesome Racheal McCaig

1. Stop telling people to invite everyone in their contact list to every event, even if it’s local. If you invite me to your 1 hour workshop at the library in New Mexico, and I live in Toronto, it hurts my view of you and questions your geography skills

2. Stop teaching people to create fake events. You know what I’m talking about… it’s the “month long event” that you say people should create, and then they “message” all the “no’s and maybe’s” and “not yet responded” to continue to pump out their message. It makes me feel all unfriendy. (yes, that’s unfriendy)

3. You know that trick of tagging people in articles/pics/videos that they don’t appear in so they come and read it? Stop it. Getting me to think I’m mentioned somewhere just to find out I’m not and you’re just being a selfish bumhole, does not bode well for our future “friend” status on the book of faces.

4. Inviting me to a “loss weight” teleseminar event, where it lists people you’ve invited is like being on a roll call at fat camp. Really? Do I look fat in these jogging pants? I know a lot of people are overweight, but inviting someone to an event to lose that weight, especially when I’m perfectly happy living my life of denial, does not strengthen our relationship.

And while we’re here, can you start teaching your clients:

1. Inviting me to assassinate someone in the temple in Mafia Wars may give off the wrong vibe for your brand… I don’t know about you, but I like to be a sniper in the privacy of my own Xbox, not regular updates on my wall of whose neck I’ve cracked

2. Hundreds of Farmville updates on your wall doesn’t make me think you’ll focus on my needs if I become your client. Especially if you’re positioned as a “busy” person, and your status update says “I have no time!!!” And yet we can read how you just nursed a sickly cat on your farm in FarmVille, well, um, it’s just awkward.

3. Blingee generic mass-sent greeting animated cards make people go nuts. Before turning off and blocking the app, I had 43 posted on my wall. In 4 hours. Nothing says “I thought of you personally” like a mass sent lame greeting self-serving wall post. “Hey Scott, if you don’t like the app, you can just turn it off” Well, I didn’t ask you, but if you insist, that’s like me having to tell people to stop kicking me in the nuts. It should be opt-in, not opt-out.

If you’re going to be in the position of an expert, act like one.

Teach people that really, truly want to know how to do things in social media properly. Show them how to:

1. Connect with people on an authentic, not automated level.

2. Show them that with time and effort, you can meet the greatest people in the world on sites like Twitter, if they only would only invest their time, care and knowledge first.

3. That “success” is subjective, not a number of friends/followers. If by success you mean some of the most incredible relationships you’ve ever had, that once trust is established can also lead to a fruitful business, you can have it within social media.

4. Tell them to treat others like they would like to be treated. That sending repeat invites weekly to your event on Facebook would really really suck if they had 20 people doing it to them every week, and that promoting others is sometimes better than promoting yourself.

5. And warn them, that us, the self-appointed guards of social media are very protective, very persistent and aren’t goin anywhere.

There you have it my fellow social media teachers. I’m sure we’ll get along fine with just these small but meaningful changes.

Love you.

Sincerely,

The entire Internet

(As a special treat, I also made this into a song for you. With apologies to Heart)

UPDATE – Thanks to the awesome @SnipeyHead here is a post on how to get rid of most of this annoying schtuff by using FaceBook Lite

Long hair can help hide a huge cranial circumference

Fast forward to the present day: The encyclopedia has been replaced by Wikipedia, The Big Book is now called The Internet, and the Yellow Pages are called Google. Yet, many businesses and phone directory sales reps continue to use these big hunks of paper and try to justify it.

I’ve had this debate with many people about businesses using tools like the Yellow Pages. Most people say it’s a great door-stop, booster seat or a thing to beat people with when they don’t pay up on a gambling debt (@EricaDurst inspired use), but let’s look at the case that most people say justifies using them: “They work in some markets! People still use them! Like old folks, shut-ins and people who are still locked into AOL contracts!”

So let’s roll with that: people who still potentially use them. I have a few issues with this way of thinking…

1. You’re aiming at the bottom of the barrel: No, I’m not saying people who use them are the lowest of the low, it’s that they’ve gone through every other resource that influences them to potentially buy before pulling out the directory. Have a look:

This is the Hierarchy of Buying I came up with 5 years ago after surveying a thousand or so people on how they hired a service provider. So your potential customer doesn’t already have a provider, doesn’t know anyone who could perform the service, doesn’t know anyone who knows anyone and hasn’t even heard of anyone in the field. So no relationships, no word-of-mouth. Nothing. (I should really make a new one, since Google would rank above Yellow Pages.)

2. Paper spam: Email spam works on the premise that if you blast it to a million people, a fraction of a fraction may be in the market for the product and a fraction of that may even click. Phone directories work on this same premise. 1.6 billion pounds of paper per year are used to produce the 500 million directories that go out in the United States every year in the hopes that you may be in the market for one of the 2,000 categories of businesses that are listed. It’s spam at its finest. You didn’t opt-in, the majority of people don’t use it, many not even taking it out of the plastic. Instead it ends up in landfill, might get recycled or thrown at random phone company trucks that drop them off. Sadly I don’t see them ever going opt-in, since like most things in the print industry, they charge due to bloated “circulation” numbers and I estimate the number of people who would actually ask for it at 14, give or take 12. Makes you want to go out and hug a tree and then go here to opt-out of them!

3. Price/Competition Sensitivity: The lower down on the hierarchy of buying you are, the more you’re up against lowest-price seekers and competition. It becomes a competition of who can have the most AAAAA’s in their legal name, just to rank as the first in their section, or who can put the biggest ad beside the rest of their competitors. It fascinates me that businesses pay good money to be listed next to all of their local competition. Since you have no clout/trust with the potential customer, the first and main question usually revolves around price. You instantly make yourself a commodity.

4. Lack of updates: Since they come out from a provider once a year, once you place an ad, that’s it for the next year. No testing on which ad converted to leads better, unless you do it on a year-to-year basis. That would mean to do a proper test, using three different ads, it would take you years to get any relevant comparative data. That’s like walking to Los Angeles from New York to see how your product is doing.

5. A dying market, literally: Through my totally non-scientific opinion, I’m gonna go ahead and guess that the amount of people who use a phone book to look for a service provider goes up with the age demographic. Hell, even seniors are ditchin them to jump online. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, 45% of seniors over the age of 70 are online. Even 27% of those over 76 are surfin the Interweb tubes. Since the average life expectancy is around 80, I’m not sure who you’re aiming for. Those over 80? Go get em! Just make sure you buy the big ads with large font.

I understand there is still a lot of money to be made by businesses that aim for the bottom, when people have exhausted every other resource, but even those people are using Google at that point, and you can track your clicks, and have a concrete ROI on it.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Some other great posts about this:

Dear YellowBook: Why? – You must read this one, not just for the post, but the angry comments that were later found out to be actual employees of the YellowBook. Craptastic. Go get em Nicole

Yellow Pages Suck – Great post by Jim Brown (no, not that Jim Brown)

We Still Use Old Media – This picture sums it all up. Also made me snot laugh. Thanks @ShaneGibson

Do the New Rules of Marketing Apply Worldwide? – Great video by David Meerman Scott

************************************************

Part 1: My Transparency on Twitter

When I started getting some momentum on Twitter, gaining up to 500 new followers a day during the craziest of my tweeting addiction, I turned off notifications of new followers. I couldn’t keep up with them all. I then had a choice, become a Twitter Diva (or “Twiva” if you want to annoy the eggnog out of people) and not follow anyone back, or auto-follow everyone back who followed me. I picked the latter, since I figured it was a nice way to say thanks for following me, and hey, if they followed me they at least have that going for them

This was a mistake for three reasons:

A pic of me in a cow costume seemed suitable for #1

1. I followed back spammers/porn accounts and other undesirables. I got nothing against porn stars. I’m sure they wake up and put on their latex pants like the rest of us, but I had no desire to hear about the sequel to Long Dong Silver in my tweet stream. Also, on your profile page, it shows a collection of people you’ve recently began to follow. Some of those profile pics don’t reflect fondly on your brand, and why are you following @WhipsAndChainsForMen anyways?

2. I ended up following 30,000 people. I barely look at my “All Tweets” screen. I’ve removed it from Tweetdeck. There is so much noise, that I’ve had to make custom groups called “rockstars” and “awesomesauce” to read the tweets of people are learn from/know. I should’ve stayed selective in those I followed back and now only follow those I learn from/laugh from or that engage with me and I find them interesting (a great tool for that is ReFollow.com I check off “Not Following” and down below check off “Users who have @ mentioned me” to see whose been engaging with me but I haven’t followed.) And don’t get me started on all the auto-dm’s it opened me up to. Even after using socialtoo.com to block most of them, if I get one more “it lets your Facebook friends find you on Twitter” DM’s I’m gonna start getting all stabby.

3. It was not being transparent. I was trading authenticity for automation. Efficiency for transparency. People would tweet or DM me that they were flattered I followed them back, and I winced every time. I couldn’t tell them that it was automated.

Twitter is different than a newsletter. There is a much more personal connection on it. Just like auto-tweeting, which I’ll go over in the next post in the series, as soon as you throw automation into your relationships, they stop being that. Is it worth deceiving people, if that’s how they might see it, for the sake of automation? I realized a little too late, my answer is “no”.

What’s yours? Does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy if someone follows you and you get that notification? How do you feel about people auto-following back? Or any automation? Comment below! And sign-up for updates to get notified when the next post is up! I’ll cover what other people are doing with automation, and why it can kill your image.

I don’t own an ad agency and have no idea about the process, the struggle and constraints there are in putting together a national ad campaign.

But I am a customer and have been dining at Swiss Chalet for 30ish years. (For those that don’t know Swiss Chalet it’s a Canadian chain of yummy chicken places, where you typically take old folks for their birthday, holidays etc.. and by old folks, I now include me.)

I recently saw the “Rudolph Swiss Chalet” commercial that turned me off so much from the place that I’ve dined at countless times it actually turns me off the brand entirely (even though I’m hooked on their quarter-chicken dinner, fries and chalet sauce)

Just watch the commercial:

I don’t really know what to say.

Ok, that’s a lie, here’s what I have to say:

1. This is the most awkward exchange between two actors I have ever witnessed in a commercial of this exposure (meaning done by a pro ad firm and client)
2. The daughter doesn’t remember their “special place”? Sweet, sweet lord of castle greyskull. Was it repressed?
3. This is a Canadian commercial, and the dad sounds like he’s from Jersey
4. Where the hell has he been? The vibe of the commercial is daddy has been away for a very long time. It brings me thoughts of a 10-15 year stretch, I assume in Rikers, or that area (again, the accent) Thanks to commenter Jay below who informed me that you would never do a 10-15 at Rikers. I’m not asking Jay how he knows.
5. I don’t even have the words to describe the looks on both of their faces during the table exchange. It almost makes me feel Chris Hansen is going to bust in at any moment with the line “Why don’t you have a seat over there?”

I understand what they are “trying” to get across. I know what it’s like to not be with your kid, being in that position both as a father and as a son, so I’m pretty much the market they are trying to emotional touch with it. And it freaks the hell out of me. Swiss Chalet didn’t need to stoop to this level to get the hype for their festive meal, usually the Toblerone or Lindor chocolates is enough to get me to come in, and you get to dip your fingers in lemon water at the end! It sells itself!

Who do I blame for this? The ad agency? Swiss Chalet? The actors union? The writers? All of the above? Can’t we make a better one?

Help me my fine readers. Tell me I’m not the only one who can see this.

And if you’re going to say “Well it has gotten you to talk about it!! It worked! ALL PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY!” then you may as well sit back down at the back of the short bus. In this day and age, bad PR cannot be spun and capped like the old days, and everyone’s voice gets heard.

(Special thanks to SmartCanucks who had the commercial in their post that allowed me to find it when searching 3 seconds after seeing it air on tv)

PLEASE NOTE: I am refraining from naming each sin with a “TW” like “Tweed” or the “Twust” because legally you should be able to pour motor oil over someones Cheerios if they do that.

Ladies and gents, with a headache, bags under my eyes and a lighter wallet, I present you with: The 7 Deadly Twitter Sins:

Greed is quite a popular sin. Twitter by default is a self-centered tool. It’s about us. But it’s 100x better if used as a conversational tool versus a dictation. I see people use it as a glorified RSS feed for their blog or an ad-puker. So absent of personality, I wonder why they even try. Yes you are in business, but if you believe that business is built on relationships, you need to make building them your business.

This sin holds a special place for the people who only retweet compliments about themselves. I was talking to a colleague of mine, she was asking how I have built a large amount of followers and I mentioned that I get retweeted a lot and I retweet others. Her reply was “I retweet others all the time!” When I checked out her page, the only time she EVER retweeted anyone was if it was a compliment about her or a #FollowFriday mention with her in it. You may as well tweet while looking in a mirror telling yourself you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like you.

GET FOLLOWERS FAST!!!! Most people on Twitter have seen tweets like this or thought of using a site that helps kickstart things for you. Seems innocent right? Let’s just have a look-see at this logic. Imagine the guy in the tweet below just followed you. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy that a new person is along for the Twitter journey with you, makes up for your lack of popularity in high school and the day is getting better! Then you see his next tweet:

I've blurred his eyes to hide his identification

How does that make you feel now? Still warm and fuzzy? Still getting tinglies? Didn’t think so. When you tweet out “follower system” tweets it says one thing: You’re in it for the numbers. I’ll bet the 3 cents I still have after Vegas that one of the next tweets will be about an amazing bizz opp or dick cream to add that precious extra inch or seven. Everything you tweet is an extension of your biz and your brand. If you want to scream about “GETTING THOUSANDS OF FOLLOWERS” be my guest, but the funniest part about the above tweet? He has 149 followers. Seriously. If you don’t see the irony in that, just shut down the computer and go see New Moon or something.

Twitter is a conversation, it’s truly what I love about it. But imagine having a conversation with someone where they take an hour to reply to you, face-to-face. How awkward would that be: “How, how’s business?” and they blankly stare off for an hour, then reply “Good thanks!”. That’s how it feels if someone takes a week to reply to a tweet. I once had someone that took 79 days to reply to a retweet. 79 FREAKIN DAYS! If it takes you longer to reply than it would to walk over a hand-written reply to my home, you’re doing it wrong. I know, not everyone is a tweetaholic like me, and not everyone can devote a good chunk of their day to Twitter. So if you have a limited amount of resources/time, let’s say 5 hours a week, it’s better to spend 45 minutes a day, for the entire week, than 5 hours once a week. Consistency breeds familiarity which creates relationships.

Ya, I’m kind of a big deal on Twitter in my own mind, which at the end of the day means fark-all to the majority of the world, but everyday I get DM’s asking me to change my pic to add a “cause” or tweet about this or that. I’m all for causes, I’m a big charity guy, but mostly I’m a fan of choice. Meaning it’s your choice to support anything you want but every once in a while people try to guilt others into changing their avatar etc. When everyone changed their Twitter profile pics to a shade of green to support some cause I got asked daily why I hadn’t changed mine yet. My answer to them? It’s none of your damn business why. My lack of participation in your cause does not infer lack of support, just like changing my avatar does not make me a better person by default. Same goes for people who think you should be obligated to follow them back if they follow you. Things on Twitter, just like most things in life, is a choice.

One of the worst things about Twitter is the reactionary nature of it. Most of us don’t think before tweeting and for the most part it’s ok since most tweets are harmless/boring/innocent by nature. But once in a while we react/lash out above our better judgement. It takes 1000 tweets to build a reputation and 1 to change it all. There are many examples of this here or here. Twitter feels very intimate sometimes, like you’re on an episode of Friends, having a conversation with a few, except there are thousands “lurking” around. It’s like having a harem of stalkers, without the creepiness.

Being the object of someones wrath is also very common. For a full explanation on how to deal with these trolls, read the previous blog post about it, but in a nutshell: don’t feed them. They aren’t owed a reply, your time or your emotions. You’re better than that.

Twitter is filled with humans. And when you throw a bunch of humans into an environment, a few things are sure to be present: 20% of people will have bad breath, 30% will wonder how their hair looks, 60% like peanut butter and cheese sandwiches but are scared to say something (or maybe I’m the only one), and 100% will have hormones. It happens, we can pretend they don’t exist, but they’re always there. It’s one of the reasons to have a flattering picture as your Twitter profile, it catches the eye. The problem is when people turn creepy or obnoxious (and by people I mean guys). I’m truly blessed to know a lot of incredible women on Twitter who are not only brilliant in business but are attractive as well. The stories they tell me about direct messages or replies they get from some men make me shake my head. Seriously folks, I’m not sure what book told you the line “Your lips look tasty” works, but it makes me picture Silence of The Lambs, and not for the cool stuff. Every tweet, every DM represents your company and more specifically it’s you as a person. So if you want to be known as “that guy” who drinks hard liquor at the networking event straight-up and gets that smarmy smile on, be my guest.

You know what? Screw it. I have no problem with you being proud of something. I mean true pride. Something you accomplished, your kids, whatever. Scream it from the top of the mountains, good on you. Just do it in moderation. Don’t just talk about yourself, spread pride of others too. ReTweet their accomplishments. One sin out of seven ain’t so bad

What about you? What do you think? What bugs you about certain tweets? Maybe you disagree? Comment below!

Oh, and of course, here is a video of me riding a bull in Vegas. Explains the bruise on my thigh:

Thanks to my awesometastic friend Manya for filming and eiditing the train wreck!

]]> http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/2009/11/20/the-7-deadly-twitter-sins/feed/ 155 http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/2009/11/06/an-idiot-calling-the-kettle-black/ http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/2009/11/06/an-idiot-calling-the-kettle-black/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:54:33 +0000 unmarketing http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/?p=256 I get called a lot of names. I get it. It comes with the territory of someone who tweets non-stop with a strong opinion with an air of arrogance confidence.

However, when I get called something like “a complete idiot” from a spamming PR company, it gets my man-panties in a knot.

I hold PR companies to a higher standard since one of their functions is making others look good.

A few months ago, I put out a specific request for Vegas people to get in touch with me through a PR newsletter about a specific topic that I was going to be writing about. I received some great responses, so the world was a good place. About a week later I received a press release about a Vegas show that was a generic email blast.

Yep, I understand the logic. This PR company, seeing my request thinks I’m a media outlet, and using their 1994 way of thinking, they translated it to “this place NEEDS to see everything we promote”. So I decided to correct them, since this email was my personal one and I guard it and know it’s not supposed to be on any newsletter/blast and/or porn list (as opposed to my other addresses?)

So I replied to this very professional person (how did I know he was a pro? Because he was using an ISP email address of course. That’s one step-away from using aol or a hotmail address for business). I requested something very simple. “remove me”:

You can also see sign #2 that you’re a pro: ALL CAPS in the subject line.

I had to reply back to this person, since they didn’t have an unsubscribe link at the bottom, even though it’s required under the CAN-SPAM Act

I figured that was the end of that. But then I got another…. and another for months.

Now it was really starting to ruffle my poorly groomed facial hair. At this point some people (mostly those who spam, pacifists and people that read “The Secret”) argue “Just delete the email and move on. Positive energy!” but I don’t buy that. The onus should not be on the receiver to delete these emails. So after replying multiple times to “remove me” I took it up a notch:

You’ll notice there is also an email address to the Las Vegas Review Journal. No, I didn’t add that in to do the jackass move of “I’m going to tell the newspapers about you!”, he not only used the BCC function in his email (I can only assume using Outlook Express to send it out) but he used a newspaper contact in the “To:” in his original blast. It’s like he just completed the tri-fecta of moronic email blast moves. The only better move would’ve been putting everyone in the “To:” so everyone could reply-all about removing them from the list.

Amazingly enough, I finally got a reply:

Other than the fact that he replied in the subject line with nothing in the body, this is perfect, right? Yay! I wrote back to confirm, yes, the email that you sent the original spam PR to and that I was writing to you with was in fact the email I was asking about. (My reply was simply “yes”) which initiated a reply with something like:

“We will search for it. We have multiple databases that will take us a few days to go through”

I’m paraphrasing here since I deleted the original email. What puzzles me is… who takes a few days to go through email lists? Are they on the old tape reels that are in a storage closet? Is it by hand? Can’t you run a search in your Outlook Express or at least call AOL support to help out a wonderful customer?

After a few days, I received this reply from the potential tech-saviest PR company of all-time:

They just HAD to add the part of how they were a big deal in Vegas. Vegas, my fave place on earth. My home away from home. Oh no you didn’t. Everything else was fine! Let me know I’ve been removed, thank-you and we’re good. But something stuck me with that one clout line, so I decided to give them a little advice:

Was it necessary for me to reply like that? Of course not. But that one line smacked me of arrogance and I needed to let them know the irony of what they said. They’ve been using my personal email as their PR fax machine, I think I was entitled to give them my thoughts.

Which then brings us to the best part:

Really? I’m all for a good ole-fashioned pissing match, but come on. You don’t know how to use email properly, not to mention the compliance issue, you take days to find an email address and this is your stance?

It seems to me that a PR company has a vested interest in sending out targeted releases, with compliant lists and should be happy they weren’t reported.

But what do I know, I’m a complete idiot.

What says you? I would love your thoughts on not only this exchange but PR’s responsibility in general when it comes to email/press releases and client representation. Comment below!

(Note: I debated showing their name/email but after a few days of thinking it over and discussing with some awesome friends, I figured I could get my point across without being “sensational” with it. Would love your thoughts on that as well)

*UPDATE*

I sent him the link to the post so he could enjoy it. I guess he did:

I don’t think he gets it. So I tried to clear it up:

Good times on a Friday!

*UPDATED AGAIN*

Seems our superstar of PR thinks that press releases aren’t covered under the CAN-SPAM Act because he’s not “Selling anything”

Any thoughts on press releases not being spam? My response:

Someone let PRSA know I’ll speak at their event about proper email practices for PR. I’ll even waive my fee. Hell, I’ll waive travel costs

(note: one of my readers called PRSA just now, they said they’re months away from choosing a keynote for the conference. Awesome)