Posts Tagged: twitter

Published on March 2, 2011 by Scott Gould

Freak or unique: a lesson in Twitter bios

I wrote a guest post for Search Engine People this week, inspired by my friends Robin Dickinson and Olivier Blanchard on writing a great Twitter bio.

This is how I start:

Olivier Blanchard‘s latest Twitter bio says “Pray that I never become your competitor’s secret weapon.” When I read that, I tell you what I do do – I click on his link and find out more.

Why?

How many times have you seen a Twitter bio that says “Husband. Father. Thinker. Runner. Twitterer. Love design and the web.” or words to that effect?

As I get more followers, deciding who to follow back is an important decision for me. I don’t want to have a full tweet stream and I also don’t use applications like TweetDeck or Seesmic to keep lists, so having a good list of people that I follow is important. And my criteria for who I follow is quite simple: will you add value to me?

I don’t know if many of us have ever thought deeply about why we follow certain people and don’t follow others, but my criteria goes something like this:

  • Are you unique from everyone else out there just talking?
  • Are you well versed in your area and therefore able to bring me new insights?
  • Are you similar to me or I do relate to you?
  • Is your location, company or job of immediate interest to me?
  • Do you talk back to people?

I then go on to explain the importance of having a unique Twitter bio. You can read the whole article here.

Published on December 14, 2010 by Scott Gould

Do Retweets Matter?

RetweetSometime ago I spoke at London Blog Club about value-based blogging. It’s an approach that values each participation that someone makes on the blog, and seeks to increase that participation by placing value on each person, as opposed to a volume approach that is more about generating large numbers of retweets and likes.

Not surprisingly, there was some crticism. This post from Lucy Hewitt highlights her disagreements, which tend to revolve around the needs of blogs that have low levels of participation but higher levels of just plain consumption.

So my question today to you is: do retweets matter to you?

For me, I can happily have 30 comments on a post and really see valued added to people, with only a handful (say 10) retweets. I see engagement of that kind, and the engagement that I have with many of you away from the blog, as being of far greater long term benefit that a messily click of a retweet mouse.

This isn’t to say that retweets don’t matter for say campaigns that seek to spread their news as far as they want – but that volume approach is just not necessary for me.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • Do retweets matter to you? Why?
  • What is the effect of “one click participation” on our internet population?

Photo by Rosaura Ochoa

Published on April 15, 2010 by Scott Gould

5 Ways To Use Twitter As An Active Authority

Recently I’ve been consulting with key leaders who are now using Twitter to extend their network, and I’ve been getting down to what are the key, daily tactics to run the Active Authority presence.

What is an Active Authority?

In my presentation on the 6 Social Media Presences, I discuss 6 different presence types that can be used by companies, brands, charities and individuals to provide 6 different forms of usefulness to their community.

The Active Authority presence is about being an authority in an area of expertise, and actively engaging your community by being personal and relational within your sphere of expertise. Most bloggers are Active Authorities because they are, well, active and authorities in their chosen subject. The best Active Authorities are, however, those who continually do the following 5 tactics:

1 – 1 in 5 Tweets are about their expertise

If I look at your Twitter page, I have to see something about your expertise above the fold, otherwise I’m not going to make the connection. There are people who have incredible skills on Twitter but you’d never know because 1] they don’t talk about it, and 2] when you follow them, you can’t see it.

Published on March 15, 2010 by Scott Gould

6 Classifications of Social Media Engagement

Sometimes I’m just stupid. I’ll be honest with you. So when it comes to Social Media integration and management, I like things to be clear and simple.

I just want to share this simple method we have at Aaron+Gould for managing client Social Media. Perhaps you can do something with it. These are our 6 classifications of social media engagement:

1. Indirect Positive Mention
2. Indirect Querying Mention
3. Indirect Negative Mention
4. Direct Positive Mention
5. Direct Querying Mention
6. Direct Negative Mention

When monitoring engagement (the first 3 are conversation about, the second 3 are conversation with), we can immedately act accordingly because we have protocols in our guidelines for what should be done under each circumstance.

One more thing: we see any engagement as an opportunity, not a threat, and our guidelines are all geared with this in mind.

Question: What can you do with this and where can you take this?

Published on December 28, 2009 by Scott Gould

The Problem With ‘The Last Tweet Of 2009′

I’ve been seeing lots of Businesses on Twitter saying “this is our last tweet of 2009″, mostly around December 22/23 – before the office closes for two weeks.

Given that Twitter is more about augmented reality than blogging (it’s even changed in some circles from ‘micro-blogging’ to ‘micro-media’), then isn’t saying “this is our last tweet of 2009″ like saying “this is our last conversation of 2009″?

Whilst you might say “this is my last blog post of 2009″, blogging isn’t the same as conversation, so when I see tweets like this, I realise there is a fundamental misunderstanding about Twitter’s use as a platform for ongoing conversation.

In my opinion, this suggests that conversation ends for special occasions, that we cease to talk to one another because it’s the New Yew, or a bank holiday. But the reality is that it is on holidays like Christmas that we talk more, so then why put Twitter away?

I faced this challenge myself on Christmas Day. Should I tweet, or not? Well, if tweeting is like work, then yes I should consider not tweeting. But if Twitter is augmenting my reality, and extending my relationships from just being those in close proximity, then why not wish Merry Christmas to people around the world through Twitter and Facebook?

Do you not use a mobile phone to text people on Christmas, or even call them? I’m not saying you don’t pay more attention to the people you’re spending the day with – but I wonder why many of us have this rather inconsistent and incongruent view.

The future is not set for less augmentation, but more. I certainly felt a few years ago that texting on Christmas day was somewhat rude, but now it’s common place. Should businesses, then, begin thinking like this too?

Perhaps you have a thought to add here?

Published on November 13, 2009 by Scott Gould

Immerse Yourself

Last night we announced at Like Minds the next step from October’s event, and the next step towards February’s event: Like Minds Immersive. The idea of Like Minds Immersive is “executive training in developing, integrating, managing and measuring new thinking, born out of a need to narrow from the big ideas shared at Like Minds” – in other words, taking innovation concepts, presenting the fundamental precepts, and then drilling down into actionable advice.

Published on November 12, 2009 by Scott Gould

10 Insights Into Guidance, As Opposed To Governance

Yesterday I attended #1pound40, courtesy of Thomson Reuters and Amplified. Naturally, it was very informative, lots of fun, introduced me to some wonderful thinkers, and gave me an opportunity to see people from the London Twitter scene that I’ve been getting to know better. And, of course, there was some great discussion that really got me thinking, which is what I want to talk about today.

Published on October 26, 2009 by Scott Gould

PRE – Your Social Media Stance

After identifying 6 Social Media presences you’ll meet in heaven (and there are probably more), today I’m providing a really easy way of managing them through a little idea I’ve had for some time that I call ‘PRE‘. PRE is being Personal, being Relationship, and displaying Expertise – and I have observed (feel free to disagree in the comments) that these three, in different proportions, are the bedrock for effective Social Media. Each of these adds value in it’s own right, and as a compliment, provide effective focus for your efforts:

Personal means you are a person, and therefore talk like a human. This means your tweets are not all auto-generated or business related, but you provide personal insight. Without being personal, you are seen as a bot or a spammer, unless your presence is for Passive Publishing or Monitoring, where you function on a service-related push model.

Published on October 22, 2009 by Scott Gould

The 6 Types Of Social Media Presences You’ll Meet In Heaven

For all the skepticism of ‘love’ and other such metaphysical language in the marketplace, it’s interesting to watch the TED Talks. In fact, it’s interesting to watch this TED Talk in particular by Rory Sutherland. Listen to the language – it’s about value, perception, resources, persuasion, emotion, compulsion, desire – all from the mouth of a highly respected advertising genius. In other words – the guy who gets paid millions to bring home the bacon for the brands, talks about emotion.

In actual fact, as you listen to these wonderful people appearing at TED, they continually reduce incredible things down to things of the heart. Emotion.

As I first stated yesterday, and refined with help from @Claire_Sloane , the successful social media practioner is a master of relationship before they are a master of ROI. Everyone who successfully uses social media is doing something different from the businesses that don’t get social media – they are aiming to add value, not aiming to sell stuff. We all recognise that business is about relationship – especially with small businesses – and social media is simply an enabler that magnifies and intensifies this. You can check out and use my framework that looks closer at this on the concept of lifting restrictions here.

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