Saran Wrap Series – My Transparency on Twitter

Welcome to a new mini-blog series that revolve around transparency in your market/sales called “Saran Wrap Series”. Understand that Saran Wrap has nothing to do with this post, or me, I just saw it in the kitchen while writing and realized it’s transparent and it sounded catchy (see what I did there, I was transparent about the blog series title. I’m cool like dat)

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The 7 Deadly Twitter Sins

Sitting here at the airport in Vegas, getting ready for the flight of shame home (not to mention it being a connecting red-eye.. oye!)  I got to thinking about this topic of sins considering I committed all seven real life ones over the past 6 days here (ok, so maybe not “Wrath” but I almost went to the machine gun range, just to be 7-for-7).

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.

An Idiot Calling The Kettle Black

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.

Sorry, You’ve Been Phished. What?

I can haz ur passwerd?

Heeeere phishy phishy phishy! (to quote the great Ernie from Sesame Street)

TwitterTown: How To Engage A Local Market

“Well Twitter is good for you Scott, your market can be anywhere in the world.”

And so it begins. Another reason why a business claims it doesn’t need to engage their marketplace. For geographic based businesses it’s always brought up that they have no need to connect with someone in Toronto if they run a pizza place in Dallas. Fair enough (although connecting on a large scale has many benefits, but that’s a rant post for another day.)

If your business is “local” there are a few things you can do to help focus your Twitter efforts:

Don’t Stick It In Their Mouth – How to ReTweet

ReTweeting (or a RT as you see on Twitter) is repeating what someone else tweeted on Twitter. It’s a great way to spread the word about someone and shows you liked what they tweeted.

But what about if you want to add your own few characters to the original tweet?

I’m about to show you why comments before the RT is the only way to go, but before you do, don’t get your Snuggie in a bunch. Spare me about how Twitter has “NO RULES” or “Who the hell are you to say what I should do??”. I’m Scott, nice to meet you. I’m not saying you have to do it this way, it’s just my opinion, and since this is my blog there is a rule, and that is: I rule here.

Trolls, Meatheads and My Mom

Back in my uber-geek days, I used to hang out in IRC chat rooms. These were places were fellow geeks could hang out in different topic based rooms, swap stories, MP3’s (when it used to be badass) and generally connect with others.

Everytime, bar none, he would appear. The troll:

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. (wikipedia)