Dia Media

Everybody Knows #influencers

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En grece
Before there were tweets there were summer nights filled with song


So I’ve noticed a recent wee bit of an uptick in followers on my personal twitter account – and have also started seeing the dubious #influencer hashtag used in their profiles. They usually follow a lot of folks (>10K) and have a lot of followers (>10K) and some even in the millions. Borderline absurd. They are slightly more subtle or sophisticated than the old #pumpAndDump strategy (follow heaps of accounts and then unfollow them all so your twitter ratio makes you look like a star). But only slightly.

Who uses the hashtag #influencer to say that they are an influencer?
Surely if you are an influential tweeter (and I’m not even thinking celebrity status) this goes without saying? What happened to show don’t tell?

I’m getting more cynical about social media.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.

It still retains the element of fun, so I stay on the platform. I’ve promised myself on my personal account to largely engage with other artists, curators and those in the arts. On our semi-dormant business account the sphere of engagement is that of design / tech.

Side note, I started the company twitter profile in 2009 and at the time there was this kind of general vibe about making it personal – so not using a company logo / etc; hence it has my shiny face and name in the profile. This is all thrown out the window and beyond of course (with promoted tweets on offer even) but I have yet to get around to re-branding the profile.

I am still occasionally guilty (ahem) of reacting to current events (The Trumpster point in case) and getting grumpy at corporations, but in general I stick to the stated themes I want to engage with.

What I know is that social media (whichever platform) is really quite a bit of work. To get to true influencer status is no-doubt a full-time job. I don’t have 7 or 10 pithy tips to help you get there.

Everybody knows that the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still picking’ cotton

All can say is keep it authentic and play nice and keep chipping away at the marble block. And ignore the puffed-up #influencers svp.

RIP Leonard Cohen.

To Quit Social Media or To Fade Away?

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I bumped into a friend/colleague the other day on the street and had a great chat about public art and whatnot. Later, I received an email from him, but didn’t get it right away because my email forwarding wasn’t working. When I did finally open it, rather than reply right away, I had seen something on twitter  he might appreciate, so I immediately jumped on twitter to mention it to him.

And … crickets.

He wasn’t there.

I couldn’t quite grasp this, thinking he must have changed his profile or something. I have known him as an extremely prolific tweeter. So I emailed and he confirmed that he had left twitter. And, even more dramatic, deleted all his social media profiles. Gasp!

I confess, one of my first thoughts was, “Aaack — but you had so many followers (in the thousands) and “you only followed a few hundred” – your follower/followee ratio* was fantastic! “….

I admired his decisive move to cut the ties to the hive mind and lose the what he called “junk language” to focus on his own work and keep critical thinking free from the sometimes banal or trivial tone of these spaces.

He is not alone in his flight from social media. In the last couple of weeks, 2 other people that I know have also dropped off the airwaves. I also deleted that you-know-who app from my phone, and after a few days of withdrawal noticed I hardly ever go there anymore. And generally get a bit of the doldrums when I do. I  wrote about social media fatigue  in the spring.

delete delete

 

What To Do When You Leave The Shoe

So if you’re considering leaving the hive mind, here are some tips for off-roading:

  1. If you’re using social media for professional purposes, it’s a good idea to keep the profile live. You could tweet something simple “Not currently keeping this account active” and change your bio line to emphasize where to reach you (like your website (which should already be there of course) – or linkedin …)
  2. Announce or have a status report on your departure. Although there’s no need to announce if you’re only taking a short break— like a few days, or hours;). Consider if this is a temporary (like 1-3 months ) absence or a longer term. Your profiles should reflect that.
  3. Unless you’re taking the Kurt Vonnegut approach. Then by all means delete and be done with it.
  4. The return. When you come back, you don’t need to say “blowing the dust off this account”. Just start tweeting, posting etc. No one cares about the dust. Unless they are an archivist. Or you’re famous, in which case you have a handler, and probably aren’t even allowed to tweet by yourself.
  5. The return if you went AWOL by a total delete: If you want to start completely fresh, with new friends, new followers then you might want to consider more carefully how many accounts you keep live, how many people you follow / friend etc. It was the overwhelming noise that drove you away in the first place, no? Why go all hustle and bustle right away?

 

If you want to disappear completely, well good luck with that. It’s a challenge to wipe away all traces, but I’m sure it can be done.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Social Media Fatigue

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Social Media Overwhelm
(with apologies to the master Mr. Schulz)

Or the incessant nagging of social media and how to resist its petulant demands.

A few days ago, the news spread that Google+ is on its last legs, as the G giant re-structures and puts ‘Google’s Photos and Stream products’ on the front burner. I will not miss the product, as my primary interactions were half-hearted attempts to engage in a space that I couldn’t quite figure out how public it was. FB is clearly for “friends”, Twitter is public (sure you can make it private, but what’s the point?) and G+ was a too many options with confusing circles type of place. I helped set up a number of client’s business pages and that was about the size of it.

And yet even as its passing is widely pronounced there are pundits who are still assured of its G for giant status.

This leads me to let out a big sigh and slump my shoulders.
I’ve developed social media fatigue —keeping up with the tweets— how much to tune in, how much to tune out, this new product, that new app. It’s a jungle out there.

I’ve noticed symptoms of social media fatigue, feeling overwhelmed, anxious or just plain ol’ bored.

When Twitter first came online in 2008, I started to notice all my favourite bloggers using this new platform. It seemed fun , but I held out till 2009;) opening two accounts, one for business one for personal needs.

At first it was always fun. Everyone was so pithy and content so curated I felt like I as at the office water-cooler and the latest greatest conference at the same time. After a while it became a kind of chore. Then, something might happen — this news event, that conference, this conference, and I was hooked in again.

It’s a see saw.

I totally see the value of social media and yet I see its tendency to be a beautiful countryside road overblown with billboards. Yuck.

So what’s a poor girl to do in the face of a behemoth.

  1. Breathe – Dr.  Andrew Weil recommends the 4-7-8 relaxing breath exercise. Briefly, (because hey you’re busy:) inhale slowly for 4, hold for 7, and exhale with a whoosh sound for 8.
  2. Focus – How many social media accounts do you really need? Pick one or two accounts to keep active. (unless of course you’re a big company and you have staff handling this for you in which case why are you reading this?) If you must have several accounts, but are truly only active on one, then let your readers where to find you. ie: I have this FB page, but I’m really active on pinterest. Join me there (with link).
  3. Prep – your content – (which is definitely not only about you!) in advance. Articles, fun stuff, etc. And yet remember that timing is relevant. Careful with those pre-tweet strategies when something big is happening in the news and you’re tweeting rainbows and unicorns.
  4. Know – your audience. Which is the same as #2. If you’re speaking to twitter, use #hashtags, @replies, learn the lingo and, again, don’t spew out links to me-me-me every two minutes.
  5. Be Nice – social media makes it so easy to get caught up in the moment in a not such nice way. Bad service at X department store (@BIGbigstore – hey I ……***&&&%%%$$(((!!!) – that’s really noise and isn’t helping you and your brand. (I speak from experience – ahem)  Of course if you’ve got a real complaint and have already tried being nice, go ahead and leverage the social media angle. But try to be polite. (I’m Canadian;)

You can find me on twitter @diamedia or @deanneachong. There’s a whole bunch of other accounts that are wasteland and I’ll follow my own advice soon and update them with where to find me. Soon come. Soon come.

 

 

30 Day Tweet Challenge – #30DaysofMobile

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Yesterday was the 1st day of Spring. Hooray!
With that I felt the energy of Spring and came up with a mini 30 day challenge – which is to research and find information about all things mobile (smartphone adoption, mobile patterns, mobile web…) and tweet about them, at least one tweet every day for the next 29 days (yesterday counted as Day 1). From stats to marketing insights to scientific research….

Midway I hope to compile a compilation post,  and at the end of the thirty days, a summary of what I’ve learned about the “state of the mobile web in 2014” with a focus on Canada.

Day 1: “Mobile used to be the future of business … used to be a trend. Now it’s the norm.” http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231832 via @EntMagazine

Day 2: Six in 10 Canadians access the Internet via a mobile device http://cira.ca/factbook/2014/the-canadian-internet.html … #30DaysofMobile

I’m going to use the hashtag #30DaysofMobile. Follow me @diamedia

If you like, tweet me and ask me a question about something mobile and I’ll see if I can find something of interest about it, and I’ll tweet you an answer.

Happy Spring!

Just How Many Twitter Followers Do You Need?

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numbers

I was waiting in line at my favourite gluten-free bakery, coincidentally right below our studio, as the owner Arlene was chatting with another customer and mentioned that she would tweet her when a new product was available.

The gal replied “Oh I’m not on twitter that much” but that she does refer friends to the bakery via word of mouth not twitter. Arlene then mentioned she was talking to someone else who basically told her her twitter presence was insignificant, that she needed at least 500 followers before it became useful.

I said, well it’s not necessarily true. As a joke I said she only needed 10 followers.

Yes, of course 500 vs 50 is probably better — I’m not arguing with that. It’s the concept that there is a set number out there that  business has to achieve. And, that if you have 500 followers, but over 50% of them are bots, that’s hardly something to write home about.

Also, the whole numbers game and the ideal ratio (you “should” have more followers than following) has always seemed a bit suspect to me. The pump and dump strategies employed by some — they follow you and then unfollow you once you’ve followed them back so they can quickly have a ratio of 2,000 to 10,000. Look at me, I’m popular!

Although I tossed out the number 10 as a joke, what if her ideal client, who also happens to be on twitter,  also happens to be a very popular twitterer….maybe she does need only a few followers. What if one of them happened to be @hummingbird604 ( I don’t think he’s a gluten free person, but who knows?) One RT from him and you’re immediately reaching a much wider audience (>10K in his case), so the logic goes. On the other hand, he tweets probably 300(0?) times a day and so that audience might just miss his tweet about your x, y, z.

A better strategy is to not focus so much on the numbers and focus instead on listening to your audience and responding to them as the genuine, authentic business owner you are.

Forget about the numbers. Really.

p.s. Say hello to Arlene on Twitter.

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others. —Orson Welles

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