What is My Social Media Policy?

01/21/11 12:47 AM

Tweet

I’ve been thinking about how and why I use social media for some time now, and have decided to put it down in writing. It’s darn near impossible to cover all aspects here, but if, for some weird reason, you wanted to be me and live my online life, this might be a guide of sorts (warning, you really don’t want it, trust me). It’s also somewhat of a biography, so don’t be surprised if

On Twitter:

What I Want From Twitter

It wouldn’t hurt to start with a discussion on why in the world anybody would want to use twitter. If I’m addicted to anything, it’s human interaction. Before sites like twitter, if you wanted to interact with anyone else, you either planned a meeting or a phone call. With twitter, I can have that interaction whenever I want. Selfish? Maybe, but aren’t we all a little?

What I Give Through Twitter

It wouldn’t be right to take without giving, and I’ve made a habit of using what online influence (aka #tweetcred) I have for good. I learned early on that social media, more often than not, brings out the best in people. It also brings out their wallets. Some examples of fundraisers I’ve organized with the help of my friends:

#TwilightYEG (May 2009)
#yegRoma (January 2010)
#yegHaiti (February 2010)
#yeghelp (May 2010)
#yegBurger (November 2010)

I like raising money for good causes, especially The Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. It never ceases to amaze me how generous people have been, often without even having met me. It motivates me to keep on organizing events and posting incessantly about them.

I’ve also been asked to present on occasion on the subject of social media. Here are my slides from a Social Media Saturday event at Guru Digital Arts College.

How I find People to Follow

A few ways. But there is one thing I will NOT do to find followers, and that is subscribe to a service, paid or free, that automatically suggests people for me to follow, just to get my numbers way up. “Why not?” you ask. A couple reasons: it is not organic and real. Automation isn’t a big part of what I do, and I’d rather be more directly involved in the follow process than that. And it seems like a waste of money. And, it looks so phoney to see someone with tens of thousands of followers. My first thought is, “they paid for that” and my second thought is “there’s no way they come close to interacting with those people.” I’ll be honest, once I started following a few hundred people, I stopped reading all tweets. I would love to, but there simply is not enough time to. To be clear, I read ALL mentions or replies that are sent to me, and if it needs a reply, you’re dang right I’m going to reply. Throughout the day, when I have a bit of time, I will go through the full feed and read a bunch and reply to a bunch of general tweets. But there’s no way I could come close to reading the thousands of tweets and conversations that take place each day. Love it or hate it, that’s the way it is.

Twitter Search

I learned from @mastermaq at my first tweetup a bit about how to use search.twitter.com/advanced, and I’m glad I did. The most useful (and probably underused) feature is one which allows you to search tweets originating from a certain location.

Check this out:

Execute this search to see the most recent tweets from Halifax. Let’s see what else we can do:

Add the word “birthday” to see who in Halifax is wishing someone else a birthday.

Don’t forget that there is more than one way to say “birthday,” so you can add alternate spellings to get more results. Just make sure to add “OR” in caps between the words to have it function as a boolean operator (more on birthdays later in this article).

I use these techniques to find out who is moving to Edmonton before anyone else does. Call me if you want help with that one, as it’s a bit more complicated to do properly . A hint: I use twilert.com so I don’t have to remember to run the search all the time. 1-780-966-6537

Profile Surfing

The timeline you see on twitter is filled with posts from people you follow. However, when a tweet starts with the “@” symbol, as when replying to or simply mentionning someone, you will only see it in your timeline if you are following both the person making the tweet, and the person first mentionned in the tweet. Example:

If I tweet “@NiagaraLiz Hey Liz, how are the falls today?”, people like @see_jane_sell and @realtormom3 will see that tweet, because they follow me and Liz. Therefore, I am (for better or worse) limiting the readership of that tweet to those of my followers I know (or suspect) are following both of us. What if I want everyone to see that I’m talking to Liz, and maybe help her get more followers by talking openly about her? Easy, just mention her within the tweet instead of starting it with her username. There are 3 ways to do this:

1. Start the tweet with a character other than “@”. Example: “.@NiagaraLiz Hey Liz, how are the falls today?” I personally dislike this method, because it is rather lazy, it’s ugly, and it just seems like a desperate attempt to show off who you’re talking to.
2. This method is only a small step up from the first one. “Hey @NiagaraLiz, how are the falls today?” It starts with an actual word, but still looks like you’re only doing it for the sake of flaunting. This is also affected by one’s username, because some have real names in them and some don’t. I would sooner say “@NiagaraLiz Hey Liz, how are the falls today?” In this case, her username acts merely as a command, and I use her actual first name to address her. It all depends on their username, how well you know them, and what kind of a message you have. Don’t let this intimidate you if you’re new, but twitter has its own language. Don’t worry, it’s pretty easy to catch on.
3. The best way to mention someone is by making it sound like a natural conversation or question. “I’m jealous that @NiagaraLiz gets to see the falls whenever she wants. Maybe I could get her to post a photo for me . I checked, and that sentence was 120 characters. You really can write in complete sentences on twitter. I truly don’t like when people post as though they are a 13-year-old using a Nokia 3100 to txt their friend between classes. Twitter is largely used by fully literate and educated adults, and I think we should write that way.

Now, what about profile prodding? Knowing that you probably aren’t seeing everything everyone you follow says, you need to know that you can see all of their posts by visiting their profile page and simply reading to your heart’s content. You can even search their username to see who’s mentionning and replying to them. Some apps make this easy to do (like my favourite, twitter for iPhone). When you’re on a profile, click the buttons at the bottom buttons to see what you can see. I also think that favourites are a very good way to see what a person finds valuable and interesting.

(for more on replies and mentions, read facebook’s official explanation here).

The follow back

Should you follow back everyone who follows you? What if you follow first and someone doesn’t follow back? Each time I gain a new follower, I first check out their profile. You could sort of give them a rating out of 5 just based on how complete their profile is, with 1 point each for:

1. Full name (yes, some people actually don’t post their name, which is understandable for certain accounts, but in mosst cases, you want to include your name. For companies, you could put the company name here and mention in the bio who is tweeting on behalf of the company. See @24HoursSunyeg).
2. Location. Especially if you are a business that wants to attract local clientele, put the city name. Address is optional, and could also be placed in the bio. I don’t like “worldwide” or “everywhere”, because it depersonalizes it. Even a global company has headquarters somewhere. Some twitter clients update your location on the fly with geo-coordinates. I strongly discourage you from using this feature, unless you don’t mind people knowing where you live.  For example, this tweet shows in green the geo-coordinates of the tweeter. Paste them into Google Maps to see her house. Creepy? You be the judge.

   
   
   

   

3. Web address. How hard is it to put a link to your blog or site? It’s not. Do it. Don’t have one? How about your facebook or Linkedin profile?
4. Profile picture. If you ever plan on meeting people in person (which ultimately is a function of being involved in a local twitter community), then use a real and current photo. I’m not a fan of the Nexopia style shots (leaning forward to show as much cleavage as possible, muscle flexing shots, etc). Twitter isn’t (normally) a dating site, and it can be awkward for some people to follow those with suggestive photos. I’ve taken heat for being a prude, but I’m sticking to my guns on this one.
5. Bio. Be creative, be honest, but say something about yourself. Remember that when you follow people and they come check out your profile, it’s like speed dating, and you’ve got a few seconds to make an impression.

These 5 things, plus your most recent posts, formulate what others will see as your first impression, and can determine whether or not someone follows you back. At least, that’s how I do it.

On Facebook

Adding Friends

The art of the friend is something I try to perfect most days. It may sound silly, but adding a friend on facebook requires judgement, timing, and tact. As a Realtor, I am very interested in connecting with other Realtors across the globe (particularly in Canada, and especially within Royal LePage), but that doesn’t mean I add anybody I can find. Some of the factors I consider are:

• have we met in person? If so, it’s almost an automatic ok to add them.
• do we have friends in common? Helps, but not always a slam dunk.
• do we have anything else in common?
• am I in the mood? Some days you just don’t feel like it.

Accepting Friend Requests

What about when someone invites you to be a friend. It is rare that I have any issues accepting a friend request, but I’m reluctant to if I can’t identify an actual human behind the account (some accounts are for a business or other group that means nothing to me) I may just ignore it. Or if it’s some hoochey girl that probably wants to charge money to watch her dance in front of a webcam, it’s a pretty easy decision to ignore. Or if it’s someone from school who you really don’t like…

Photos

Facebook is awesome for photos, because you can tag people in them, add comments, like them, and share them publicly. One warning: make sure nobody will get offended by the photos you post. Not cool.

Lists

I create lots of facebook events, but they’re not for all of my friends, because a friend in Toronto wouldn’t likely care about an event I’m hosting in Edmonton. That’s why I add people to lists when I friend them. I wish the mobile app would allow you to do this, because then I wouldn’t have to wait to get to my laptop to accept a friend request and add them to a list. I have an Edmonton list, a Calgary list, and a Realtor list. Sometimes you can use networks, but they’re not very reliable, because people don’t always use them right. If you have a better way to do this, please let me know!

Events

Organize them. Have fun. When you invite a few hundred people to an event, facebook invites them a chunk at a time. Not sure why, but they do. Event invitations are easy to ignore, so be sure to send out at least one message to your guests so that there’s something in their inbox to draw their attention to it. You used to be able to print a guest list, but that disappeared for an unknown reason. Facebook fail.

Birthdays

Who doesn’t like being wished a happy birthday (other than most women over 25, so about 75% of everyone I know)? Well, for those who like it, I think you should find a way to tell them. At least wish them a happy birthday on their wall. Even better, call them up. Most people have a phone number on their info tab. Even better than that is sending them a card. But you kind of need their mailing address.

On Linkedin

I hate it. It’s not fun. Ugly to look at. Hard to connect with people unless you work at the same place or have their email address. That said, I think you should be on it, because it’s good to be findable by those who like using it. For me, when someone adds me, I’ll accept it (unless they’re an SEO expert from Sri Lanka or something random like that-not that I have a problem with Sri Lankans…), then give them a call and thank them. And maybe a follow-up post card. People like snail mail. You should see how surprised people get when you call them up or send a love letter, because nobody else does it (ok, possibly an exaggeration, but you know what I’m talking about).

My 3 Fs of Social Media

Forget about business tweets, people want to hear about your real life. Being on twitter is, after all, like having your own reality show. In life we have fun, we eat food, and we help each other out. I realized this while preparing this presentation for Guru Digital Arts College during their Social Media Saturday.

Fun

I don’t care who you are or what business you’re in, if there’s not fun involved in what you do, I’m not interested. Sometimes real estate can get boring, or stressful (not sure which is worse), so I really try to make it more enjoyable. For example, rather than post statistics on current market values (boring), I post foreclosures on Fridays. I call it (ready for this?) #foreclosureFriday. I also post the new million-dollar plus homes and call it the #baconList. Why bacon? because bacon is awesome.

Food

A great way to engage people is with food (you don’t say). I plan lots of tweetups, and food is almost always the way to go. Everyone eats lunch, so why not just eat it with others? You don’t need permission to organize a tweetup, you just need an appetite. Same with hashtags. If you want to create an event-specific hashtag (which you should), just think of one which is concise and go with it. It never hurts to consult with others. But a tip on hashtags, don’t use them like this. And don’t forget to check in on Foursquare when you go out to eat. Here’s how and why.

Fundraising

I’ve given myself to The Royal LePage Shelter Foundation, and it’s what I raise money for most often. It is very heartwarming to see how generous people are, and surprising when you discover how many people want to get involved in a good cause. I’ve seen it time and time again, and it never gets old.

So, now you know just about everything about online Jerry. Are there any further questions, your honour?