I have recently entered an entirely new (for me) internet world: the marketing Web. My Etsy shop, an attempt to offset some of my online costs, opened recently, after several weeks of research, exploration, and reading about online selling.
I've read article after article on using social media -- Facebook, Flickr, Twitter -- to sell something. Promote yourself! Sell your product! Use these 'social' media to do it. And see, I've done it -- all those links are to my own accounts.
Many of these articles recommend tools to bump up your numbers, number of people you follow, and number of people who follow you. Follow everyone who follows you, they say; and unfollow those who don't reciprocate. This advice is totally contrary to how I am accustomed to using these services.
I joined Flickr when it was still Beta. In fact, it was rather like Twitter + Twitpic is now: a chat room with photos. Chat, as in conversation, as in reciprocity, mutuality.
Not mutuality of following, but mutuality of interest, attention, and responsiveness. Several of the people I 'met' then are still my friends -- my online, valued, appreciated friends. Friends who welcomed and guided this awkward, uniformed introvert in her initial attempts to be social.
I hate to sound old-fashioned, and I don't want to imply that there was some 'golden age of the internet' -- but it does seem to me that there were some common, shared values among many of us at that time, so long ago.
As a blogger, I felt some responsibility to keep my blogrolls interesting; to not stuff them with blogs that my readers would find disappointing, merely to get an exchange link. On Flickr, I 'follow' friends, and folks who have great photos and fascinating lives. On Twitter -- where I've also been for a long time, I follow people who tweet poems and have intriguing conversations.
It is tedious to go through followers one at a time, to confirm that they are real people. It's tedious because the non-people use the same tools to follow everyone on Twitter, so there they are -- following me. As if some male-enhancement seller is interested in what this reclusive female Montana poet has to say.
I have discovered, with a new Twitter account I set up just for this experiment, that there is value to following tons of people. It's an entirely different experience than my quiet, mellow, thoughtful personal account -- but it is also exciting, and revealing, and interesting. All these people! All these different lives and opinions! I like it.
Why would I unfollow someone interesting, just because they don't follow me? It took awhile for me to figure out why this is advised.
It's because Twitter, in its guard against spammers, looks at follow/follower ratios. If you follow way more people than follow you, the Twitter robot gets suspicious. So, if you are only looking for high numbers, you want to keep that ratio close. Thus, unfollow anyone who doesn't return the favor.
I feel for all these folks, who may have had an online shop for ages, but who are new to the rest of the internet; who will accept this 'follow-unfollow' advice, only to find their Twitter feeds stuffed with spam and pornography, and the folks in whom they might have an actual interest buried therein. Of course they will wonder: What's the point?
Well, numbers are not the point.
It's like stuffing one's shop or blog with keywords and tags that may bring lots of hits, but leave the hitters disappointed -- they don't find what they came for. Hits, and numbers, aren't the point. The point is to connect with people who are interested in what you are doing.
Beyond that, though, follow-all undermines the efforts these services make to stop spam. Every time a spammer gets followed, they get validated; the spam robot thinks this is a real account, a real person. Why else would they get so many followers?
This is a diservice to us all. It encourages even more misuse of the service. It pays the spammers to misuse the service.
It's anti-social. It's a dismissal of shared responsibility for our shared communities.
Don't do it.
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I haven't joined twitter as the idea I have of it is quick snippets of talk - not necessarily worthwhile talk but talk. Is this so? I don't have enough time in the day to join in on an online cocktail party if this is what it amounts to. I've joined Facebook to keep up with friends and family as they don't all visit my blog - can't get them all on Facebook either. I follow blogs and Facebook friends because of interest. Not looking to make a living through these contacts I guess I get to be choosy but why bother with sites you don't like for an occasional sell. It the trade-off worth it? I guess sometimes it might be. I don't think I'd keep up my blog if I never had visitors and commentors. It would be too sterile. I already live in the middle of nowhere; the internet is my social life but everyone comes to it for their own reasons. I think you make a really good point of not wanting spammers followed. We want them gone, not proliferating.
Have a great day.
Posted by: freebird | 15 May 2009 at 10:28 AM