I mentioned in a recent post that I’m working to become more humanistic online, and trying to allow my audience the opportunity to get to know me personally. While I’m not sure you’ve fallen in love with me online yet, know I’m working hard on pushing away the dry/overly PC/PRish/Boooooorrrring personality of yesteryear (okay, actually really as recent as last month). I’m afraid that I’ve gone too much in the other direction, and instead of giving non-industry related information, I’m sprinkling my network with useless information about my daily life. Basically just status updates. What’s worse? Is there a right solution?
If you back date my tweet stream as little as four weeks you’ll see a recognizible difference in the way I communicate. A month ago I rarely @mention, I was afraid of clogging up the stream. And even when Twitter made changes to the feed, I was still hesitant.
What’s the most embarrassing (and will undoubtedly make me sound jerky, which believe me I feel that way in retrospect) about how I used to communicate is that I almost never replied to folks with less followers. HOW RIDICULOUS IS THAT!? What if every person I tried to reach out to in Twitter with more followers didn’t respond? That would be a big 86 of my relationships with Sarah Evans, Guy Kawasaki, Shannon Paul, Peter Shankman, Chris Pirillo, Mona Nomura and Justin Levy, just to name a few.
What does my network want to know about? What can I say in 140-characters that is of value? What matters? I’ve heard the 80/20 model. I try to stick to that. 80 percent everyone else, 20 percent me. Offer value, but provide unique insight.
But, am I giving too much by telling people where I am, who I’m with, or what I over heard? What is my 20 percent? If I want to communicate more openly with my audience in my all-about-me 20 percent, why do I spend the next day reading back through my tweets and deleting ones that didn’t get a response, or I’m afraid offered up too much. What is up with THAT? Am I getting too personal?
What I’m coming to grips with is there is no “right” way. Each person (with their much larger followings) that I admire in the vast Twitterverse approaches very differently. I need to understand it’s trial and error. I won’t get @mentions every time. I won’t get RT’ed everytime. Not everything I say is of value, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be deleted.
Bottom line is that I can’t expect my audience to fall in love with me online if I don’t learn to accept and love myself in the space first. But dont worry, I got this. Just watch.
Great post!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately that Twitter is sort of setup as this giant, never-ending love triangle. Someone is trying to connect with the people they follow, but at the same time those people are trying to connect with the people *they* follow…and so on…forever…or at least until you reach @aplusk.
Recently, I’ve been spending time trying to connect with the people that follow me. I mean, if people came up to me at a party and said, “I’m interested in what you have to say” (i.e. they “followed” me), I would talk to them, right? They would probably be the people I would end up hanging out with because they care about me and want to have me around.
To be honest, the tools aren’t really very good for this unless you follow everyone that follows you. But, I’m trying.
Anyhow, keep it real out there…and just be yourself and that’s all that matters.
Hi Jessica,
I think you’re on the right track, but I also think you were obsessing waaaay too much about it.
One thing that I try and do is at least inject a bit of humor in the personal stuff. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s just noise. However, from my perspective, I think I have a clearer picture of the personality of people I follow who do provide some kind of insights of themselves than I do of those that don’t.
Many times, this doesn’t make a difference, but it does implicitly color my opinions and judgments of what they tweet that they deem is of “value” to their followers. It also means that if I come across something that I think might be relevant to them personally, I’ll ensure that they see it rather than just hoping they happen to notice it in the tweet stream.
Even with following ~500 people, there are still people I don’t see for days. The ones I actually miss are the ones that seem the most human and genuine, not the ones that just provide “value”.
Good luck finding your balance. I don’t think I’ll ever get there. Instead, I think it will be a moving target as everything moves forward, my workload fluctuates and my relationships with people on Twitter deepen and are reinforced via face-to-face meetings.
Thanks for the thoughtful post.
ast
Jessica there is NOTHING to be embarrassed about the way you’ve been online in the past with social media. The info overload that social media and social networking can be for people can really paralyze people. Coming to grips with finding your own way (learning through failures/successes) and your voice, just like Sara Evans, Brogan, Pirillo, myself, etc have done is all part of the process.
Tweet ya later.
Wow. I think you need to chill a bit, UNLESS that is how you are with every other communication medium.
Just be you. Period. End of story. There is no “rule,” regardless of what people tell you about 80/20.
I follow people because I want to know them. Not because I want to know their brand. Not because I want to know what they found useful. Not because I want to see their retweets. Not because I want to know what they are eating for lunch, and when they are going to bed…etc. It’s a combination of all that. I want to know THEM better. That includes everything.
Are you tweeting for your followers? Or are you tweeting or you?
If it’s for you, then who cares if something doesn’t get passed around or shared? Seriously. Who cares?! If you lose a dew followers because you are being you, who cares? They shouldn’t have been following to begin with.