How NOT To Get Twitter Followers (The Sequel)

After the huge readership of my blog post How NOT to Get Twitter Followers, I just had to do a follow up. However, I just want to clarify that I am referring to the use of Twitter for business purposes in my observations and not as a personal account.

How NOT to Get Twitter Followers (The Sequel)

1. Taking It Personally

I follow lots of people, regularly, whom I think may have something interesting to say or may add some value around my chosen subject matter - The Social Workplace. I'm always on the look out for good content that expands my knowledge or I can share with my followers.

However, if after a period of time it appears you are adding little or no value to my stream, than I may choose to unfollow you - BUT it's nothing personal, it's just business.

2. Not Listening Or Engaging With Others

In my previous post I stated that you should listen more... BUT I now think a metric is needed to guide people. Listening three times as much as you push out your own content is a good starting point, but the more you listen the more knowledgeable you will become.

There is nothing more frustrating than someone who constantly pushes out their own content ignoring the great content around them (see Twitter: Learn to listen and stand out from the crowd...).

Pie Theorem: For every piece of the knowledge pie you share you will receive two slices in return. You don't always need to be the baker...

3. Blah Blah Blah In Your Bio

Your Twitter bio should be your sales pitch of who you are if you introduce yourself to someone for the first time. If you waffle, or are too vague, then I don't have the time or patience to delve deeper to find out if you are indeed worth following.

Make it easy for people to want to follow you.

(Example Bio I saw today: "Walking tight-ropes and eating kittens. It's what I do. " - huh????)

4. Re-Tweeting The Same Content Constantly

I know a Twitter stream can be fast flowing sometimes and your followers may miss Tweets from time to time. It is therefore ok to Re-Tweet your content, but not again and again and again.

5. Expecting A Follow Back

There is this myth that if you follow someone you MUST follow them back. Why? Where does it say that in the Twitter handbook? I don't care about the quantity of followers I have, I am much more interested in the quality of content they can provide me and my followers.

If you follow me expecting an auto-follow back, go and follow someone else.

6. Putting Quantity Over Quality

Tweeting quality content infrequently is going to get my attention much more than Tweeting rubbish content all of the time. Whilst this may seem like obvious addition to the list, if you look at your own stream you will see many people do not follow this advice.

7. Not Giving Credit

Removing the original Tweeters name from a Re-Tweet is a big no no no no! This can be give the impression that you are stealing someone else's content (whether that is your intention or not) and is a quick way to get blacklisted by the Twitter community.

8. Only Re-Tweeting Other People's Stuff

If all you are doing is Re-Tweeting other people's content, why am I following you? I may as well just follow those people instead.

Be original and interesting...

9. Tweeting Broken Links

Sending out broken links can be so frustrating for the recipients of your Tweet. Whilst this is often caused by the re-shrinking of links that have already been shrunk, it is still your responsibility to ensure the content you distribute is valid.

Always check any links that have been shrunk before you Tweet your content.

10. Paying Too Much Attention To Your Klout Score

I know this is the complete opposite of the previous number 10 option in my original post.

However, there has been significant changes recently to Klout's algorithm's in the way they measure influence which has left many of us confused and infuriated. For this reason, all the credibility Klout had established has been lost and will take some time for users to accept this once again as a reasonable measure of influence.

SOME FINAL PEARLS OF WISDOM (REPEATED)

Remember, your Twitter account is just an extension of you and your business - a great social communication channel in a very public arena. Take Twitter seriously and treat the people that follow you with respect. Who knows where that next lead or opportunity will come from...

The Path of Social Media Enlightenment

Do you find that some people just don't get it?

Whilst the majority of us understand the benefits of using social media in the workplace to aid business collaboration, to improve knowledge sharing, to build better professional relationships of trust etc..., there are some that don't.

In my experience these type of people fall into 3 distinct categories:

1. The Culture Shockers
These type of people are brought up in a culture where knowledge sharing and collaboration isn't natural, or are of a generation where social media is thought to refer to sharing a newspaper with a bloke down the local pub.

The GREAT NEWS is these type of people can be educated and shown the path to social media enlightenment.

Dilbert explains these type of people so well:

2. The Power Losers
These type of people believe knowledge is power and fear that if they share a piece of the knowledge pie then they become less important to the company. This I don't understand. Maybe it is just part of my DNA but I have always believed in the Pie Theorem.

The Pie Theorem states that for every piece of the knowledge pie you share you will receive two slices in return

The GOOD NEWS is these type of people can change and be redirected on to the path of social media enlightenment.

(Note: To save you the time of doing a Google search on The Pie Theorem, it is indeed a term I just made up!)  

3. The Corporate Ladder Climbers
These type of people are similar to The Power Losers, with one significant difference. They hold on to all their knowledge and refuse to collaborate because they want that next promotion regardless of the harm it will do to the company.

The BAD NEWS is these type of people will never change and should be avoided at all costs. Thankfully though they are a dying breed in the new social workplace world.

So next time you come across someone who doesn't get it, try to figure out if they are a Culture Shocker, a Power Loser, or a Corporate Ladder Climber. If they fall under either of the first two categories then help them out. Show them the path to social media enlightenment. If they appear to be a Corporate Ladder Climber then show them the door, unfriend them on Facebook and block them on Twitter!

Is reducing costs the key driver for social media?

Having a social platform to allow employees to connect and collaborate better will improve the knowledge flows of an organisation. It will allow companies to utilise the collective intelligence of its own employees to crowdsource and solve key business issues.

But in the current economic climate, companies are starting to think more about how to reduce costs. Is social media the answer? Kathi Browne of Wingspouse Publishing raises a good point on the subject:

"Interestingly, it is usually cost that is holding companies back. They see a potential cost to the man hours needed to learn / participate in social media and don't have a clear way to measure the return."

And maybe this is the problem. Companies are too focused on how to measure the ROI of social media and forget that actually this is just a natural form of business evolution. With over 500 million users of Facebook and 100 million users on LinkedIn, it's a fair bet to say that many of your employees are already using social media as part of their everyday lives. So surely it stands to reason that this will become embedded as part of how we communicate and collaborate in business? Kees Vogelsang agrees:

"Given the fact that more and more people are using many tools already for personal usage it is becoming easier to implement social media. And ... there is no way back. Ultimately these tools will be embraced everywhere, just like mobile phones."

So for those companies that are making the transition and investing in social media, if costs are not the key driver then what is it that is encouraging this cultural change? Andy Jankowski of Enterprise Strategies puts it simply and succinctly:

I am seeing a few companies embrace enterprise social media to reduce costs, but not as many as I would have originally thought. It seems the main driver of companies making the Enterprise Social Media investment is simply changing the way their company works (e.g., more collaborative, less siloed, etc.). These types of improvements, while valued by the c-suite, are often hard to justify with numbers. I am seeing many more contextual examples being put forth than detailed ROI studies.

And this is where companies will have the greatest success with social media. The focus shouldn't be on reducing costs per se but more on the business benefits of better collaboration. We also mustn't forget that employees are working more and more remotely these days and social media can play a vital role in keeping employees connected.

Companies do need to start looking at evolving from a knowledge management organisation to a knowledge sharing one, using social technologies as the enabler to build that social business infrastructure. However, the cultural change in this transition should not be under-estimated or ignored and needs to be incorporated as part of the transitional strategy.

So is social media in the workplace a key driver for reducing costs? It will certainly influence the reduction of costs, but it should never be the main focus for creating The Social Workplace. The main focus should be the evolution of a company to provide more and better collaboration opportunities and increase knowledge sharing.