Back in the old days of the Internet/Email, it was a happy place (we’ll call this time period B.S. “Before Spam”). In the BS years the Internet was pure information and email was a way to communicate useful information and conversation. Every time an email came in, it was like a little butterfly of excitement flew into your computer, knowing it was containing an ingredient of awesome. Then something changed. Email started getting UnAwesome.

Cold-callers, Cold-knockers (those that went door-to-door) and Car-smackers (placing flyers on your windshield) realizing that their methods of sales assault worked less and less, had found a place that they no longer even had to lift a finger to push their useless wares on the public. “Now we can email our crap!” and proceeded to group-high five (which is now evolved to awkward fist-bumping).

The holders of the inboxes started to get angry and classified anything they didn’t ask for as Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), or SPAM for short? Laws were passed, ISP’s set up block lists and the word was spread “People don’t like spam. Stop it.”

If you are accused of being a spammer, it’s the biggest shame there is in business.

Now there is a bigger problem. Warm-Spam. Social Spam. Friendly Unsolicited Commercial Contact (FUCC). It’s the practice of spamming your social media contacts and it needs to stop.

Think about it, someone finally accepts you as a contact on LinkedIn, follows you on Twitter, friends you on Facebook and apparently that is yiddish for “SELL SELL SELL!!” to some.

It’s actually worse than old-school spam. With a faceless spammer, we can delete/block and think evil thoughts about them, but with social spam, you sometimes know the person in real life, so removing/blocking them can cause more awkwardness then seeing Uncle Louis at Christmas dinner after he poked you on Facebook.

Some common Warm Spam techniques:

1. Real Event invites – Inviting your entire friend list to an event, regardless of geographic/demographic make-up. (more on this practice in a previous post)

2. Fake Event Invites – An event made for a non-event. It could be your “website launch party” or “Vote for me because my self-esteem is based on artificial online popularity campaigns”. It’s not even the issue of the “event” itself, but the relentless inviting and messaging people who haven’t “RSVP’d” for an event that doesn’t exist that make people stabby.

3. LinkedIn Emails that show everyone’s email address. Nothing like you emailing everyone about your upcoming paralegal training seminar through LinkedIn, which exposed our private email addresses to each other! Yes, this just happened.

4. Tagging – Mostly on Facebook, but now creeping into Google+, it’s the practice of tagging someone in a pic/post for the sole purpose to make them read it and have it appear on their timeline.

5. Auto-DM – Tweeting someone about your Facebook fanpage as soon as they follow you on Twitter is like shaking someone’s hand at a networking event and then asking if they want to go to another event down the street.

6. Publicly Shaming – Asking someone to support a cause publicly by adding their Twitter name is like asking me to support your charity at an event with other people standing around. Ask privately or post a general support message. Don’t shame people.

7. Fan page requests – Inviting people to “fan” your business by sending a request hurts my brain. Add it to your blog, put it in the signature in your email, but going out and picking people to be fans is just awkward.

8. Farms Run By Mafia Ville – I know you want more coins/land/bullets are whatever they’re offering you to invite “your friends” to play a game of Farmville/MafiaWars/TheSims but stop it. While you’re tending to your farm, we talk about you behind your virtual back. (Thanks to Amanda Wood for the reminder on this one!)

Relax your pitchforks, “real” business people, I’m not saying never sell. I’m not even suggesting social media is a sacred ground, never to be sold on. It’s the method. Your wall on Facebook is yours, do as you please. You want to tweet about your upcoming teleclass? Knock yourself out. You lease that space. However, as soon as you add my @UnMarketing to the tweet or tag someone on a page, well, now you’ve FUCC’ed it. Especially if that action also generates an email to that person, now you’ve spammed their email with the notification. Double FUCC’ed.

Your wall, your profile is your real-estate. Post as many promos as you want. But you soon realize that nobody is sharing/liking/clicking/retweeting them. Now, a logical person would realize “Hey, maybe people aren’t engaging with my ads because they don’t really like ads in a social setting.” But sadly, most react “People aren’t clicking because they missed it!! I’ll just post this on their page too!!”

Nobody has joined a social media site to get sold to, but people do actually buy from people they know, like and trust, things that are created by being social with others. See that equation. Be nice, be helpful and don’t FUCC people, and social media can be the greatest thing in the world.

Have you had a friend send constant Warm-Spam? What did you do? Leave a comment below!

Let's call him "ROI Guy"

“What’s the ROI of Social Media?”

That’s the question that gives me ulcers when asked it.

Easy now, old-school business folk, I don’t have a problem questioning the value or return of something that takes potentially both time and money from your business. Any smart business person would do that.

My problem is we hold social media to a higher level of judgement than most things in business.

So, at no charge, I will Skype into any of your companies and explain exactly the ROI of social media, if you first can tell me what the ROI is of the following common business practices:

1. Meetings. Especially meetings about how social media is a waste of time. Weekly meetings…. with 10 people at them.

2. CC’ing everybody on every email. I figure the time it takes to read every “official” corporate email, you could’ve built a Twitter empire, ruled Facebook and had time for some Angry Birds (on Google+)

3. Meetings.

4. 2,000 mugs with your logo. I know when I need a lawyer, I search my coffee mug shelf. I know, I know, you bought them in December so you could spend your budget so you’d get it again next year, but still.

5. Overpaid conference keynote speakers No, wait. Scratch that. Nothing to see here. Move along.

6. Meetings.

7. Making your employees commute. Your business is mostly done over the computer or on the phone. Why do they have to sit at a desk again? Face time FTW!

8. Leather boardroom blotters. Ask the admin assistant that is on year 5 of a wage freeze how impressed he/she is that you just spent $2000 on leather squares.

9. Meetings.

10 Your Yellow Pages Ad, Direct Mail pieces and Tradeshow Booth. If you know the exact ROI on these three, awesome. You’re ahead of the game. Most have no clue.

11. Fax machines and toner. Seriously. I had a vendor say I couldn’t email a scanned version of a contract to them, since they needed me to “fax the original”. You know the actual piece of paper doesn’t travel through the phone line right? Right??

And even the smarter ones in business know that to be successful, you have to:

- Answer questions about our product or service

- Educate consumers

- Offer post purchase follow up

- Market research

- Discuss industry best practices

Read those five things out to a social media naysayer and ask if they agree about them being smart for businesses. Because that’s a checklist for what social media is used for. Just sayin.

Combine these with banning employees from using social media at work because it “distracts workers” and you see why I’m losing my hair. (Social media didn’t create distracted workers, Minesweeper did).

What do you think? Anything to add that you see companies doing with no question, yet deny social media because of “ROI”? Leave it in the comments below!

I’m such a spaz that I don’t think I could handle the lack of immediate validation and/or rejection.

I’ve been amazed since UnMarketing came out. The immediacy and coolness of tools has blown my mind. Waking up everyday and reading tweets in real time about people reading the book makes me smile. Every. Day. It’s the passive conversation our readers are having with each other that was untappable (my new word) previously.

Twitter mentions

And sadly most authors aren’t even listening to their readers:

And it’s not just on Twitter. Blog reviews, and other mentions can happen under our radar. Setting up a Google News Alert for your book title in quotes will keep you on top of most mentions online. I’m also tacking Trackur for a spin. I’ll update this post to let you know how it goes.

Kindle

I was initially a little miffed at the Kindle version of UnMarketing because they made all my saucy/sarcastic footnotes into endnotes, and people wouldn’t click on them, thinking they were real citations and other ridiculousness, but I now LOVE the Kindle version for many reasons:

1. Immediacy – I’ve had people buy the Kindle version during one of my talks as they’re in the audience. This blows my cranium. The drawback of being an author who speaks is when people leave the session, they rush off to the next one and forgot to purchase your awesome book. Or worse, there is no bookstore on site and if you think that they’ll rush to the bookstore when they get home, you’re sadly mistaken for the most part. The immediacy and ability for your audience to buy your book on their phone/laptop/reading device in real-time is epic. If you’re even a half-decent speaker, the highest moment of intent to purchase your book is during your talk. And people can buy it. Brilliant. (this isn’t unique to the Kindle, you can also grab them on the fly as iBook, Nook, Kobo, etc)

2. Digital loaning – I freaking love this about the Kindle. You can loan your copy (link explains it) to someone else for up to 14 days. All you need is their email address. You can only loan a book out once, and can’t read it while it’s out on loan. I believe it’s only available currently to USA based purchasers, I’m not sure why they hate Canada but nonetheless this is great for spreading your content, especially to those that can’t afford all the books they want to read. The author/publisher also  has to agree to it. I learned about it when I saw this tweet a few days ago:

I saw the tweet and retweeted it. I received a large amount of responses that people were impressed I would retweet that, since it doesn’t create sales. I say why wouldn’t I? I want people to consume the book. To love it. That’s our job as authors as far as I’m concerned. It’s not just to write it or talk about it or even sell it. It’s to get people to devour it. Jim wanted to read the content but didn’t have the means currently and I wanted him to read it. And now he is

Heck, if you’d like to get a loaned Kindle copy, leave a comment below or if you have the Kindle version and are willing to loan it to someone, leave a comment too. Then simply reply if you have or want it to the person. And Shazam! We have an UnLibrary!

3. Free R&D – This actually made me say out loud “WOW!” which was awkward since I was sitting by myself in a coffee shop, but I digress. Kindle lets you highlight parts of a book. That isn’t the cool part. Kindle also takes the data and tells you the most popular highlighted lines from your book. Check out the UnMarketing ones! This is R&D for an auther/publisher and tells you what is resonating with your readers. (I just said YA! out loud. I’m going to get thrown out of this place.) Another great thing to do is to take these and make them tweets. You already know it clicks with people. Bring on the retweets!

Here is a sample of mine:

That’s gold Jerry!! You don’t have to guess what’s working, it’s right there in front of you! You can go and check it out for any Kindle book, not just yours. Just click over here. And you can also see the top highlighted books. Just click on the book title and it will show you the highlights. Amazeballs!

4. Track Sales – Using Amazon Author Central you can login as an author and see sale info that used to only be available to your publisher. It allows you to track where it’s selling and in what medium.

Click to enlarge the chart

Digital books are gaining traction. Do not ignore them. It doesn’t matter if you like to read in that format or not.

And this is only a fraction of what is being done and accessible out there to authors and their fans. Did I mention I did an entire 30-city UnBookTour planned through Twitter without any cost to myself or my publisher? Ya, that too.

What have you seen out there when it comes to books that excites you when it comes to the 2.0 book world? Leave a comment below! Or let me know you want to loan/borrow the Kindle version of UnMarketing!

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.

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.

Then January 1st, 2009 I made a deal with myself; live on Twitter for 30 days and see what would happen. Since I didn’t want to be another one of those marketing experts that dismissed something just because I didn’t use it, I was going to give it my all.

Fast forward to today. Over 40,000 tweets, almost 50,000 followers and a new addiction later, I realized what Twitter brought me. I was thinking today “What if I didn’t jump in?” since a lot of the talk nowadays is about “ROI” and the business case for social media I came up with a list of stuff I wouldn’t have today if I didn’t make the jump just over a year ago.

If I didn’t jump in, I wouldn’t have:

• The most incredible support system I’ve ever known in my life. When UnJr’s mom passed away in the fall, hundreds, if not thousands of you opened your arms, even if it was just for a virtual hug. I’ll never forget that
• One of the best friends I’ve ever had.
• A book deal with Wiley
• A platform that allowed my blog to have instant readership once launched, averaging 10k readers per post, brand new (key here: launching the blog after building a following)
• Learned to learn again. Seriously. I had stopped learning. Figured I knew everything about business/marketing. And that’s the worst place to be. I now learn all the time, especially from blogs like Convince & Convert, The Brand Builder, Chris Brogan, McKain ViewPoint, Blue Sky Factory Blog, Awake @ The Wheel, Altitude
• A water cooler: being the head of a company is very isolating, especially when you run it from home. Twitter allows me to have that water cooler banter which allows people to feel included
• Six figures in revenue. The reason why I don’t write about this often is people get the wrong idea. They think “if he can make $, then so will I!”. I get a lot out of Twitter because I give a lot. Social media doesn’t change the fact that relationships take time. I just believe that business is built on relationships, so I make building them my business.
• My Mastermind Group: Ok, I don’t have one, since I have Twitter. I have met some incredible business minds that I can float ideas to, and they can do likewise, all under the belief that we can better each other. I’m surrounded by awesome every time I fire up Tweetdeck
• Writing about my passion: Not only did I get to meet, and consider an awesome friend, Erica Ehm, I get to write the UnDaddy blog, which has given me a writing outlet I never thought I’d do, and love it
• A free trip to DisneyWorld for me and my son. As well as a Tassimo coffee maker, RockPort shoes, 35 books and counting
• The ability to go to events and already know people. Twitter allows me to meet people online, then when I see them at an event, I feel I already know them, because I do
• Allowed me to do my greatest passion in business, speaking at events. A lot of those gigs were generated from a single tweets. Caught someone’s eye, then they went to my site.

And finally, Twitter has renewed my faith in humanity. I’ve never “met” more kind, caring, genuine, funny, smart people, anywhere than I have on Twitter.

And for that, I thank all of you. Don’t forget, none of the above happens without giving on Twitter first. Jump in.

What has Twitter brought to your life/business? Comment below!

**Turns out my man DJ Waldow wrote about this exact thing today too**

**And now Lisa Barone wrote a perfect reply to our posts. I wanted to argue with her, but couldn’t. She’s right**

1. It allows you to reach people in other time zones

2. It allows you to make Twitter scalable

3. You get to build relationships when you’re not around!

*Sorry, give me a minute*

Ok, I’m back, I had to go throw-up in a garbage can. Automating tweets means you want people to listen to you, but you’re not listening to them.

There is no such thing as automated engagement.

There is no such thing as programmed authenticity.

Absent tweeting is dictation, not engagement. Lecturing, not listening.

Automating tweets is like sending a mannequin to a networking event. Stick a post-it note on it, and roll it in, to multiple events around the world! Think of all the Chamber of Commerce mixers you could cover! Different time zones! Let the relationships winfall begin!!! Boooyaa!!!

Obviously you realize why that’s not a good idea. The initial tweet doesn’t create the relationship, it’s the conversation after. That’s the best part! I’m not saying don’t send out “marketing” tweets, or pitch a product. I do it. But when I do, why in the name of Sly and the Family Stone would I not want to be around for questions or comments immediately after? Tweets have such a short shelf-life, it’s the conversation immediately following the tweet that’s so crucial, and if it’s a marketing tweet, may help close the sale.

It’s a different story if your account is a feed of events/news and that’s what people follow for. The problem is when people “think” it’s you tweeting to them, but you’re not even there. Once they find that out, it could hurt your relationship and your brand. That tweet tells people “I want the benefit of a relationship, but don’t want to put the time in to nurture it.”

I heard Guy Kawasaki talking about this at a recent event. He said to ignore the “Twitter Nazi’s” that tell you what to do, and you should automate a bunch of tweets. Besides the fact I have a huge issue with people using the term “Nazi”, the biggest problem is this: people at that event looked up to Guy for guidance and thought “this is how you become successful at Twitter!” and I actually read some tweets after saying they were looking forward to automating Twitter! Guy can say and do whatever he wants. What I find wrong is for people just starting out, this won’t work. You can’t replicate someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers and a celebrity name to your Twitter account for your home biz. You actually have the advantage of authenticity and one-to-one on Twitter. Why try to be a WalMart when you’re a small biz? You have the competitive advantage of being you. Automation hurts authenticty.

Relationships take time. If you try to shortcut social media, you’re shortcutting relationship building.

Agree? Disagree? Comment below!

PS – Finalizing the UnBook Tour in the fall. Ideas for places to stop, organizations/conference I should speak at? Lemme know in the comments or contact me! Speaker Demo video is here

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

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.

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!

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