I’ll be the first to admit that I’m never a social media early adopter. While I penned one of the first posts for BiteMarks, I basically said “this is dumb, who cares what I have to say, please get back to work” and then promptly didn’t write again for just about three years. I was very late in joining Facebook, and still avoid doing much with it aside from seeing what my friends are doing. And while I’ve joined Twitter, and am fascinated with it as a communications channel, I can’t say I’m prolific in my tweets.
It is with that perspective in mind that I laud and criticize ValleyWag’s piece today on Twitter, which used a story from The Times (UK) to rightfully point out that the vast majority of Tweets on twitter are nothing more than pointless, mundane bits of information pushed out to networks of people who really could care less. I’m increasingly dismayed by the cottage industry of “social media” experts who think that because they have a blog and Twitter handle, they are therefore capable of providing social media strategy to companies and the world at large. You know who you are.
However, I do think ValleyWag (and the Times) sells itself short by not going beyond the UK research to recognize that the service clearly has more interesting and useful applications for those who are willing to go beyond just blasting out useless tidbits about what they’re doing right now, or essentially spamming thousands of followers with irrelevant URLs and retweets (RTs) that few of their followeres will actually care about. As with any new communications channel, in time, the “fake experts” will fade away, their influence waning as followers grow disenfranchised with the banality of their updates.
And while I’m not sure I’ll be on a list of Twitter’s “most followed” any time soon, I am learning quite a bit about the tool and how best to use it. Last week I worked with a client to find not one, but two customer references for a story with a major business publication in less than 24 hours. It wasn’t long ago that that process would have taken days, if not weeks. A major DVR manufacturer recently started following my girlfriend when she complained that our new unit wasn’t working properly. And they fixed the problem within 5 minutes, no phone call required. Rahul Sood is doing interesting work creating a network of followers by integrating contests and more traditional marketing practices into his Twittering. Heck, even Shaq is connecting with his fans more closely.
What’s the most interesting use of Twitter that you’ve seen? Or is it really just a communications channel for the vain and vapid?
(Photo Courtesy Brad Fitzpatrick)
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