Posted by Gabe on March 12, 2010 under Facebook, Kids are Heroes, Social Media, Twitter | 
I always get a kick out of remembering when my first day on Twitter was. If I forget I can go to the site that tells me when I did. For me it happened to be Christmas Eve, 2008. I almost feel guilty for being on the computer that day and cannot recollect my motivation, but at least I didn’t tweet too much on the day I should have been spending with my family. It wasn’t long until I was addicted to the concept of getting to know people through this platform. As I progressed I learned a lot which I have tried to share in this blog. Sometime mid-2009 I created a Facebook fan page for Kids Are Heroes and now I had two platforms to manage. So what is the point of all this social networking, anyway? Is it just to pass the time and comment on what we all had for breakfast? Absolutely not. It’s about connecting with people. Period. Funny thing is that I thought I was connecting with people all along. I would converse with them, ask about what they do, give them #followfriday mentions, help them in any way I could, the whole nine yards. But it wasn’t until fairly recently when I took these connections to the next level.
You may know that recently we have partnered with Levar Fisher, an ex-NFL star who travels around the country motivating youth and speaking about Kids Are Heroes. I was introduced to Levar by Mary Kurek, who works in Levar’s behalf by helping him to connect with people like me. I watched how she works and that is how I learned to really connect with people. Connecting means more to me now than just #followfriday mentions on Twitter. Thanks to Mary I learned that it’s about taking action. It’s about seeking out people who might complement you and you them. It’s about picking up the phone and really connecting. From those conversations both parties can then take action and actually do something to further each other’s causes. I have been on the phone for the first time with people I met on Twitter more times in the last three weeks than I have in the year I have been involved in social media. I believe that this works just as well with businesses as it does non-profits. I had a long phone conversation with Tom Tuohy of Dreams for Kids yesterday and the word that came up often was ‘collaboration’. I am so looking forward to seeing what unravels from that connection. This week I also connected with Blake Raab of Bears on Patrol. One would think that non-profits would keep their cards close to the vest and not share anything, because we are all competing for donations that are out there. That’s the old way of thinking. It just so happens that I love Blake’s mission and I really want him to be successful. That is why I am trying to come up with ways that our kids can support what he does. I have learned that a great leader is one who makes people who work with him (or her) successful. This is what I aspire to be and hopefully something that I am working toward every day.
So take action and leave a comment. I might just arrange a phone call. :)
Posted by Gabe on February 23, 2010 under Kids are Heroes, Social Media, Twitter |
I should really call this post “How to (and how not to) Get Me to Retweet You” but that would probably break all the URL shorteners out there. I write this post because I often get people asking me to retweet them. These folks might think I’m just rude for not doing it. So be it. Maybe you will think a bit differently once you see why I didn’t retweet you. On that note I will start with “How Not to Get Me to Retweet You.”:
Ask me directly. By direct message or otherwise.
This simply doesn’t work with me, unless we have a long standing relationship. I know what you tweet is important to you, and you think that if I retweet it everything will be solved, but that’s simply not the case. You must understand that I get A LOT of these requests and if I obliged everyone no one would understand what my own platform is.
Retweet me.
Some think that if they retweet me to their 150 followers I should be obliged to retweet them back. I don’t care if you have a million followers, I don’t work that way either. The retweet is not a bartering tool. If you retweet me please do it because you liked what I wrote and not for any other reason. I will do the same for you.
Say “Please RT”.
Now many social media gurus will tell you that this is the best way to get retweeted, to add ‘Please RT’ or something similar to your tweet. I must admit I do use it myself sometimes. And I also admit I will do it if I know the person and I also know that they are genuine. But if you do it all the time I for one will stop reading your tweets. I retweet things that touch me in one way or another. It could be funny, silly or really meaningful and powerful. There is no way to know how a tweet will affect people. I am constantly surprised at which of my tweets get retweeted. Sometimes I think, ” Ok let this one go and watch the fireworks!” and all I hear are cricket sounds. Then I see another tweet has been RTed several times.
Now for “How to Get Me to Retweet You”:
Write something meaningful that touches me in some way. That is the huge secret to getting retweeted by me or by anyone. This morning I happened to see a tweet sent out by of all people the Cookie Monster (who I am not even following). I had to retweet it: “Me got hungry while typing and ate me computer mouse. Taste like chicken.” Now that made me laugh. Sometimes I retweet responses to my tweets if it makes more sense to do so. I retweet @HeiferPortland a lot because he tweets about kids supporting his organization. I stopped retweeting Amber Alerts because I later discovered that some of them were fake.
I also have to be able to see it to retweet it. I follow quite a few people and obviously can’t keep up with everything. So does that mean you should @reply to people so they will see the tweet when you want it retweeted? No – absolutely not. As a matter of fact that may cause an unfollow from me. I am in the same boat here. I see celebrities who have hundreds of thousands of followers and think “Boy, if they tweeted my ID just imagine how many more people would find out about Kids Are Heroes!” They usually aren’t following me so how do I get them to notice me? I can @reply to them. However, if I do that, that is making me look worse than if I did nothing at all. So what do I do? How do I get people to retweet me?
Converse with me. I try and write meaningful tweets and interact with people. Just like anything else, the way you get people to notice your tweets is to converse with them in a genuine manner. You can’t focus on being retweeted or it just won’t happen. Focus on the connections you have and the retweets will come.
Posted by Gabe on February 3, 2010 under Social Media, Twitter |
I was trying to think of a catchy title for this post, but when it really gets right down to it, I am simply laying out my follow strategies for everyone to see. People have asked me what they are, so I am coming clean. These are not necessarily the strategies everyone else should use, but they are mine and I will explain why I use them.
I have mentioned many times that my main goal in my use of social media is the promotion of the Kids Are Heroes concept and its web site. On a daily basis, the more people that discover it, the more people get behind it, the better chance we have of becoming a global organization one day. And I humbly believe this strategy is working, as I hope to be making a major announcement real soon.
Some people are intimidated by big numbers. They won’t follow people once they have crossed a certain threshold. I can understand that sentiment to a point. Many celebrities do not follow back very many people. This isn’t a conversation, so I am not interested. I really love it when someone wants to put on airs that they are a celebrity by using this practice. But if you think that people will no longer connect once they surpass a certain number think again. Each week I meet new people. The occurrences of me speaking to them on the phone are becoming more frequent. Some are “newbies” and some I have been conversing with for a long time. I see and pay attention to every reply I get. I respond to almost all of them. The only replies I do not respond to are ones that do not warrant them or ones that have “worn out their welcome” in terms of the nature of the request.
Follow other people. Simply stated, this is the most effective way to get people to find out about us. Many are sent an email that notifies them of the new follow, and that’s when they check us out. If they like what they see, they follow back. So I bet you are saying, “Great! I’ll just use a follow program to automate this and sit back and watch my followers grow!” I have never used, nor will I ever use an auto-follow program. First off, some of them are nefarious to say the least. Secondly, some of them take over your twitter stream advertising themselves. Once I see this, I instantly unfollow that person as do other people. Even if you gain followers this way, they are empty, non-qualified followers that probably won’t listen to you and will do you more harm than good.
So, what makes me follow one person and not follow another? Here’s my list:
1) Fill out your profile. I can’t stress how important this is. If you do not do this it appears like you don’t care or are hiding something. The more information you put in your profile, the more people can use to break the ice with you. Use a good picture that can be enlarged so we can see the real you. I discourage the use of an animated gif file, or something else that is designed to attract my attention, like putting your picture upside down. I don’t follow people who do this. If you are promoting a business with your Twitter ID that’s okay, but at least use a full name as part of the profile so we know what to call you.
2) Engage with others. If I see an entire page where all you do is either send out a quote or repeat a news story, then I’m going to assume you don’t want to talk to people. I want to see those ‘@’ signs.
3) Don’t spam. This should go without saying, but unfortunately there are many spammers on Twitter. Most people block them. Some people however just don’t know any better. They do believe in their product and want to tell the world about it. Get to know us first, then we will ask you about what you do.
4) Be very careful about asking for retweets. I get asked to retweet stuff all the time. People think that just because my numbers are larger than theirs it will really further their cause if I tweet about it. They don’t understand how many requests I get and how my twitterstream would be nothing more than a compilation of other people’s tweets if I gave in. If in the tweet you say (Pls RT) that’s one thing, but sending me a direct message asking to tweet about something is totally different. Depending on if and how well we have connected it can cause an unfollow, even a block.
5) Be active. My typical rule of thumb is that if a person hasn’t tweeted in more than three days I will not follow them. That may sound drastic, but the more often people are on Twitter the better chance I have of connecting with them.
6) Connect with people any way you can. I often follow people after a retweet or an @reply. Why does this work? Because when people I am not familiar with do one or the other I look them up. They are usually following me. I see their profile and stream, etc. and they look like a good person to connect with. The fact is I simply missed them when they followed me.
7) Comment on my blog. This is similar to #6. Your twitter stream might have indicated to me that you do not connect with people, but you have just proven that you do.
8) Don’t protect your tweets. I used to think that people who protect their tweets had a tendency to be more genuine. I have not found that to be true, (or false for that matter). They have their reasons for doing so, which whatever they are I respect, but I typically won’t follow them because I can’t see what they tweet about and how they interact with people. I usually just move on. And if you think you can connect with others that are not following you by sending them an @reply, think again. I had this question posed to me as a comment on one of my blog posts. I showed how the person you send the tweet to will not see it if they are not following you.
9) Don’t use profanity. No matter how long I have followed you, or how we have connected, I will unfollow anyone who uses profanity. This has always been my stance. I believe it’s not professional and I am also trying to protect my 11-year-old nosy daughter who is always in my office.
10) Don’t be negative. Recently I had a customer service issue with a printing company. I think good customer service is one of the key ingredients to being a respected company and when it goes bad it for some reason sets me off. I couldn’t control myself, I had to tweet about it. However, the tweets were not in vain as the company saw them, sent them to the right person, and the situation was rectified and I will now continue to use them. But I still don’t recommend ranting on Twitter. It’s the same as being at a party. People don’t gravitate toward others who are always spouting negativity.
So how do I find people to follow? I use wefollow.com to find categories (parenting, education, philanthropy, etc.) I am interested in which people have aligned themselves to. (NOTE: Use this service with caution. I just saw a tweet that warned me about a nasty practice that they are using that can be avoided.) I pick out followers I really connect with and see who they follow. If you respect them that means they have done due diligence and are concerned about who they follow, so it’s almost as if they have done the work for you. I use a great tool called TweepSearch to search the profiles of people for keywords. And as I mentioned I follow people who connect with me in some meaningful way.
Now keep in mind that this is hard work. It can sometimes be tedious going through profile after profile and sifting through the bad ones. But the more it pays off the more I do it.
So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Let us know what strategies you use.
Posted by Gabe on January 22, 2010 under Social Media, Twitter |
Recently I wrote a post about the pros and cons of having your tweets protected in Twitter. I don’t have a personal bias as to what you should do regarding this, as it is not my place. However, if your tweets are protected, I think there’s something else you should be aware of.
I received a direct message from one of my Twitter colleagues asking me to point her to my blog post about hash tags. She was desperately trying to get involved in the recent tragedy in #Haiti. I sent her to the post. She read it and told me it was great, but her tweets were not showing up in the search column, even though she was using the hash tag properly. I asked her to call me so we could investigate. Sure enough I went to her profile and she was doing it correctly. She also noted to me that her friend was unable to retweet her posts. I again went to her profile and couldn’t find the retweet button either. “Maybe there is something wrong with your Twitter account” I told her. These were words she did not want to hear. Anyway, after a bit more investigating I noticed her tweets were protected. Aaaahhh! Now that makes sense. Why should your tweets show up in the public timeline if they are protected? Twitter is working as it should in both cases.
However, I was able to retweet her posts in Tweetdeck with no problems. And people using the Twitter interface, although they can’t use the native retweet function, they can certainly do it the old fashioned way by copying and pasting. So again this proves that your tweets are not truly protected no matter what.
So be warned that if you do protect your tweets you will not have the opportunities everyone else has of getting retweeted and joining a conversation based on hash tags.
Posted by Gabe on January 17, 2010 under Social Media, Twitter |
Yesterday I discovered the value of the Facebook Share button. I have known for quite some time about Tweetmeme’s Retweet button (as seen on this blog) as a Wordpress plugin but hadn’t thought of using it on my regular web site. That is until yesterday.
The Tweetmeme retweet button allows users to easily share the current URL with their Twitter followers by composing a tweet and bringing up the Twitter interface. You can still edit the tweet before you send it out. The button code for your web site can be found here. What’s nice about it is that you have several easy options to modify the button. (I chose to have a compact button.) You can even change the identity of the retweeter which defaults to @tweetmeme. This is nice because that allows you to have other users promote your own Twitter ID as well as the URL. That’s what I call a “twofer”. If you click on the number that prefaces the button, it will take show you who tweeted your link. It would be nice if you could set the background color or have that be transparent, but that doesn’t appear to be an option just yet. Update: According to their own support dep’t., it’s supposed to be transparent but not all browsers support that. I verified this to be true. Works fine in Firefox, no go in IE8. (If you need the plugin directory for Tweetmeme, it’s here.)
So now I have an easy way to share the Kids Are Heroes web site with both Facebook and Twitter. And yes, that’s a hint. :)
Posted by Gabe on January 12, 2010 under Social Media, Twitter |
I spotted a tweet in my Twitter stream that caught my attention today:
@so-and-so Love some feedback on my blog:) http://unshortenedspammylink/wordpress:) Leave Comments!!!!
I know that Twitter is a service we can all use as we wish, but this tweet violated so many of my own private rules I had to look further. Looking at this person’s profile there was sadly (and predictably) a long list of the same requests to other “so and so’s”. The proximity of the smiley face to the link broke the link itself, so I never got to see what was so great that everyone should want to go and leave comments on this person’s blog. The person has been tweeting since June of 2009 and despite this long list of tweets the other interactions he/she has had seem to be genuine and quality interactions, at least as far as I looked back.
Rather that dissect what is wrong (if anything) with what this person is doing I would like to pose a question. Assuming you truly believe that “this person just doesn’t know any better”, is it appropriate to leave a gentle DM telling her that what he/she is doing might be a bit spammy? I’m not going to try to taint anyone’s opinion one way or the other by giving mine, but on other occasions I have been tempted to do just that, even if I didn’t know the person.
So what do you think? Is it appropriate to nicely tell someone about something like this, as a friendly gesture, if you have never had interactions with them? Or do you simply unfollow and move on?
Posted by Gabe on December 31, 2009 under Social Media, Twitter |
I just recently had my one-year anniversary on Twitter. At the risk of copying my friend @DannyBrown who has a series of “Ten in 2010″ posts, one of which I made the list (thanks to my extensive lobbying and a rather substantial sum of money) I felt the urge to come up with a list of ten people I would like to meet at a “tweet-up” in 2010. Most of these people have supported us from the beginning and others I would just like to get to know. Without further ado, here is my list in no particular order of relevance.
1) @OKE_News Menachem works tirelessly for the benefit of underprivileged children. If you haven’t met him check out his profile and his web site. He’s the only guy I know who tweets harder than I do.
2) @ThirstAidLive Denise and her whole family are always planning fund raisers. Big fund raisers — for other people. This year she was hit by that huge flood in Atlanta and lost her house. Sometimes life can be very unfair. She is now organizing a flood relief concert for her community that was so devastated. I hope we can pick up again where we left off real soon as we had plans to work together.
3) @JohnHaydon @JoeWaters – This is a “two-fer” since where you find one the other one is standing right beside him. John is a model of how to be in social media, always helping and supporting other people and has been a great champion for Kids Are Heroes. Joe is his sidekick and quite frankly I don’t remember what he does. But I heard he is fun to have around at parties. ;)
4) @DannyBrown started the #12for12k effort. If you are not familiar with it check out his web site and learn about it. This movement is a great demonstration of the power of social media if you know how to interact with it properly. In addition to that it is helping people all over the world.
5) @PoulinGail is a kindergarten teacher from Southampton Massachusetts who reads a different story from the Kids Are Heroes web site to her class each and every day. How I know this is because they post shout-outs to one of the heroes after they have read the story. Each time I see this I am extremely encouraged as this is exactly what the web site is designed for. She even got the class together and collected socks for the homeless emulating one of our heroes. I just wish we had a thousand other teachers just like her.
6) @RichardBranson doesn’t really tweet to me but if you know anything about how Kids Are Heroes got started you’d know that he was a major influence. Coincidentally in March of 2009 we entered a contest sponsored by Sir Richard and thanks to the Kids Are Heroes fans we won! In the month of June our video pitch was played on Virgin Atlantic planes for the entire month. I am one who is never star-struck, but this is one “celebrity” I would surely like to meet.
7) @AARprotectkids is run by Zephora Haddon. She has been watching us from the start and has generously included us in her fund raising activities. Her Amber Alert registry business is growing impressively which only helps us because as more people sign on and select Kids Are Heroes as a charity the more support we get.
8) @hiannie is my friend from Singapore. Among other things she teaches Mandarin Chinese online. She is also just a really good person who I could learn so much from besides a different language.
9) @TheElders I have never met any of these people but would humbled to meet just one. This was the group started by Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel (who by the way is not on Twitter otherwise I would add him to this list). This group of “elders” with the likes of Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela go out to troubled areas on our planet and try to help resolve difficult issues in a peaceful manner thus saving thousands of lives. I would just love to be a fly on the wall during one of their strategy meetings.
10) Kids Are Heroes List - I know I am cheating but I would really love to meet all the kids on the Kids Are Heroes web site (now approaching 100) and their parents as well. (I guess I need a bigger hall to rent for this tweet-up.) Our lives have been so enriched since we started this venture and it is all because of these children. My sister came down for the second annual Kids Are Heroes Day in October and when the “after-party” was over she told me specifically, “I met some very special people today.” This sums it up very nicely and I couldn’t agree more.
I know I said “top ten” but they are my rules and sometimes I like to break them.
11) @SueScheff is the author of the “Google Bomb!” book which is an eye-opener when it comes to what can happen to one’s reputation if someone smears it online. She is also a champion of teens and helps parents deal with sensitive subject matters regarding teens. She is also a great Kids Are Heroes supporter and has been for a long time.
12) My Colorado Peeps: @DaveWebb @EricRodwell and @MiloGirly I lived in Boulder Colorado for three months a little over ten years ago. I had just gotten a job and three days later I was told I was shipping out. Certainly there are worse places to be so I lucked out in that department. I have traveled all over the US and Canada and if I had to live anywhere other than Frederick, MD it would be in Colorado. I loved the climate, the scenery and mostly the people. Dave, Eric and Kyra are all great examples of those people.
So this is my ultimate tweet-up. For those of you who feel left out, you can come too. I’m sure I missed some real gems, so you can let me have it in the comments section and I will somehow try and make amends.
Posted by Gabe on December 17, 2009 under Facebook, Social Media, Twitter |
What’s the first thing you think of when you think of social media? Is it connecting with others? Maybe. But why are you doing this? Do you need more friends? Would you really have time for all the people you connect with on a regular basis in real life? I think the main reason many of us engage in social media is that we are promoting something. I make no bones about the fact that I do this to promote Kids Are Heroes. Would I drop out of it if all of a sudden Kids Are Heroes ended abruptly? Maybe not, but I can guarantee you I would not be doing it as much. Don’t get me wrong — the “social” part of this makes it fun and I honestly do consider many of my connections strong ones. I do think there may be people who do this just for fun, but more of us do it to promote something, whether it be business, charity or something else. Is that bad? I don’t think so. However it is how you promote things that can directly affect your success.
To date I have been treating Twitter and Facebook mainly as promotional/networking tools. They are indeed a great way to get the word out about something. But lately I have found another great use for social media. I have always known about it, but for whatever reason am more aware of it now that I have been using it more for this purpose. That is, learning. This is true especially for Twitter. I have learned a lot lately from one of my Twitter colleagues whose name is @JohnHaydon. His videos have taught me how to “trick out” my Facebook page, and I discovered ClickToTweet through him among other things. I just signed up for his “31 Day Challenge: Optimize Your Blog For Social Media” which starts in January as this is a topic I am focusing on right now. I look forward to discovering more new tricks.
When we started our Kids Are Heroes venture the web site was it. Period. KidsAreHeroes.com was the entire effort. Then we branched out into social media and all of a sudden we had a blog site that supported it. Now we also have a Twitter, Facebook and Youtube presence among other things. I now look upon it as one big package. It all has the same message to get kids involved in philanthropy and we try to work on each individual spoke of the wheel to make it better. Take SEO for instance (for you ankle-biters that’s ‘Search Engine Optimization’). I know a little bit about it, but want to know more. I want people to have the best chance of finding our web site or blog when I’m not there to direct them. So what do I do? I use TweepSearch and search for “SEO” in people’s profiles. This is a wonderful tool to discover people from all walks of life. I can then subscribe to their blog to learn more or even ask them direct questions.
Another obvious way to learn is to just ask. I have a social media training session coming up and I lack in one area as I do not update Twitter with my phone. I know how to do it, just don’t have much sense of what tools are being used and which are more popular. By sending out one tweet I found that ‘Tweetie 2′ for the iPhone is a big one, and also came across a great resource to discover Twitter apps. OneForty.com is a new web site developed by my old Twitter friend @Pistachio. (You can also follow @oneforty). If you click on iPhone you will get a list of Twitter apps designed for it.
It is great to know that people are so generous with their knowledge. Google’s results can be so overwhelming sometimes. And for the record I do like to pass on what I learn and give back too. See a catalog of my posts on Twitter.
Posted by Gabe on December 11, 2009 under Facebook, Kids are Heroes, Social Media, Twitter |
I have been working on something that I’m pretty excited about. I have a social media seminar coming up next week that I have been planning for a while. I figured I’d better be organized so I started with an agenda. I thought that it might be cool if I provided an electronic document that linked the subjects to corresponding posts that I have written. I’ve been writing about Twitter for less than a year so one would think that would be rather simple. Maybe it’s the Wordpress theme I am using, but it wasn’t too easy to pinpoint exact posts from a while ago, let alone browse through them.
I ended up creating a new page that I call the guide to my social media posts. (You can also access it at the top of the page by clicking “directory” on the menu.) This was a pain to create, but I think that it may be very helpful to people. It lists the topic, title and excerpt in the order that I prescribed.
Update 12/12/09: I was so happy with this method of organization that I went ahead and classified many of my other posts the same way. Now when you click on “Directory” you get a listing of all the Kids Are Heroes related posts, and then can branch off to the Twitter and Facebook related ones. For now that should suffice, since these are the main topics I focus on.
Ideally there is a Wordpress plug-in to do this, and my friend and guru @DannyBrown suggested I try a plug-in called “In-Series“. This appears that it may be able to accomplish what I am doing, but I liked what I had set up and I know I have ultimate control over how it looks, the order and sections each post belongs in, and ultimately which posts make the directory. I also didn’t see a working example anywhere which would have been nice. Maybe someone knows of one?
Anyway I think this is an excellent way of providing readers a quick way of perusing all of our material, allowing them to easily choose what interests them. What do you all think?
Posted by Gabe on December 10, 2009 under Facebook, Social Media, Twitter |
It just seems inevitable that I start to write about Facebook. Even though six months ago I was telling people I was strictly a Twitter person, only keeping up an outpost on Facebook, I have become much more involved with it since then. I totally agree with those who are tired of all the “gurus”, many of them being far from it, so I of course do not claim to be one. But being a software developer I have a keen interest in learning the technical concepts and using them to our benefit.
Bear with me because I am still learning. I have delved into Wordpress a bit lately as well. You may see some FB and Twitter plug-ins here on my blog and I finally understand how to get the blog to do what I want for the most part. This kind of stuff is fun for me. So what I plan to do is talk about some differences between Facebook and Twitter in this post, and follow up with a technical “how-to” post regarding Fan pages as I have been getting requests to do just that.
When I originally asked my friend Bob about how to best spread the word about Kids Are Heroes, he did not hesitate to reply “Facebook and Twitter”. So I started an account on both platforms. Immediately I saw quite a difference. I find Facebook to be much more personal as people tell intimate details of their lives and post their family pictures. I did not want everyone to “friend” me. I didn’t feel it was appropriate. Then I started a Kids Are Heroes group. That’s the ticket, I thought. My nephew told all his friends to join and before you know it I had over 200 members. The problem was I was the only one writing anything. There was no participation. I had the ability to message everyone, but being a person who hates to be bugged that way I hardly ever used that capability.
Twitter on the other hand was entirely different. It seemed to be a much easier way to connect with people. There are several ways to find those that share your interests. WeFollow.com and TweepSearch.com are just a couple. Follow people and voilà, they more often than not follow you back. Strike up a conversation and you are on your way to making a connection. All of a sudden guess what? I was actually starting to get comments on my blog. The number of Twitter ”followers” was increasing much quicker than the number of Facebook “friends” or group members. So I focused most of my efforts on Twitter.
I’m not saying you can’t use Facebook in the same way — many people are far quicker to “friend” others than I am. For some reason I was less comfortable with that.
Then along came the Facebook Fan pages. At first I didn’t pay much attention to them until I “fanned” one or two pages. Wait a minute — the updates go to my wall automatically! Very “Twitteresque” I thought. When I realized this I immediately dropped the group and started a fan page. I messaged everyone in the group to come over and a good portion of them did. I was left with a hundred and some fans and more fans were just trickling in. Ok, I thought — just like everything else regarding social media, this isn’t going to happen overnight. Patience is the best virtue you can have when it comes to things like this. So I hunkered down and kept up both my Twitter account and my Facebook fan page equally. I tweet more than I update my FB status, only because I have a sense that people don’t want to fan pages to clutter up their walls all day. I may be wrong — this is just a gut feeling. So I make sure I have at least a couple of updates a day on my fan page and tweet whenever the urge comes over me.
The Fan Chart
As you can see by this chart, things got started in late July and the numbers crept up ever so slightly over time. Then you can see a big jump in fans in November. Ironically, this was a result of me going against my own principles. (Kind of like George in the Seinfeld episode where he does the opposite of what he normally does and eeverything works out for him.) If you have been keeping up with my blog, you will know that I try and follow my own rules of social media and I also sort of preach them. I often say do not ask for votes or ask people to follow or fan you. I still go by those rules, but I also admittedly break them from time to time. I just went through my status updates and found this posted on November 18: “Hmmm… Wondering what would happen if all fans of this page suggested it to their friends. ;)”. This is totally against what I tell people to do. “Patience is so important”, I say. “Rome wasn’t built in a day!” Well my friend Eri (who is also a Twitter friend) did just that. She suggested my page. So did Amy. Neither of them have their number of friends listed on their profiles, but let me tell you they have a lot. Eri is from Indonesia and as a result Jakarta ranks as the top city of fans with 83. Chicago, where Amy comes from, ranks 3rd with 31. So as of this writing I have close to 1300 fans. To some that might be a lot — to others that’s chump change. But I will say that this is one of the biggest differences I have seen between Facebook and Twitter. I get #followfriday recommendations on Twitter every week and they never amount to an onrush of followers. As a matter of fact, the additional followers are negligible. Since I put out that FB request my fans have increased by 400%.
So what does all this mean? As of this writing we have 1289 fans and 16,403 followers. Do these numbers mean anything? Not really. It’s the amount of interaction you receive that’s important. Dialog is what you want on both platforms. Connections – even making new friends is what this should be all about.
So getting back to the main topic, which aims to list differences between Twitter and Facebook, I will relay a few gems as they have applied to us.
1) You are much more vulnerable to spammers on Twitter than in Facebook. This is truly a drawback in my eyes.
2) Followers seem to be much easier to get that fans. The difference here is that fans are there because they truly have an interest in what you have to offer. Followers, at least some of them, are more interested in getting you interested in them.
3) It is much easier to have a conversation in almost real time on Twitter.
4) You are born with a “vanity url” on Twitter. Facebook requires at least 25 fans to get this. It used to be much more, so now it’s not as bad as it used to be. Vanity URLs, like http://facebook.com/KidsAreHeroes, are much easier to send out and put on business cards, etc.
5) Twitter seems to have a lot more applications that replace the native web interface. Seismic Desktop, Tweetdeck and others offer an alternative to viewing and interacting with your tweets. As an afterthought seemingly, Tweetdeck now allows you to read and update your Facebook page, but at this time doesn’t seem to have any way to access your fan page. Tweetdeck is the only one I have experience with, so I may be wrong on this. But the convenience of not having to refresh the browser every time is nice.
6) For fan pages at least, at least so far for me, fans mostly react off of what we write as opposed to posting original material. Many fan pages don’t even want you to post original stuff for fear that the other fans will be subjected to spam of that the message might somehow become diluted. At this point I haven’t experienced that so it’s totally all right if fans start up a conversation, as long as it is related to the theme. On Twitter most of the posts are written by others. You select those that interest you and interact with them.
7) Twitter makes it much easier for you find new people and to get to know them, at least at a basic level, before you decide to follow them. Even if their tweets are protected you can see their profile, where they live and what they say about themselves if they have filled out that info. If they are not protected you can see all their tweets and get a good sense if you might have a chance for a connection. Facebook doesn’t allow for that.
8) Facebook has a better capability to be a hub for your company. In a Twitter profile you are able to provide one hyperlink that will actually go somewhere. With a little trickery in FB you can have virtually unlimited links on the sidebar of your wall.
Again, if you have 100 followers on Twitter and 100 friends on Facebook, the experience between the two might be very similar. This post comes from the angle of wanting to promote a business or in my case a non-profit.
So, which one is better for promoting your business, cause or non-profit? If you had asked me 6 months ago I would have said Twitter – hands down. But now I spend a lot of time managing both platforms. I think I am finally starting to worry less about which platform to use and worry more about effective ways to engage people in general. We don’t want to overload or spam people. We do want to get our message across, but must realize they have a message too that is equally as important.
I would love to hear your suggestions on how we can engage people better, and/or tell us how you do it.
