My Relationship with Guy Kawasaki and the Evolution of Twitter
It was a May-December romance back in 2007/2008. Â Guy Kawasaki had 5,000 Twitter followers and I had 500. Â I can still remember my first shock when Guy followed me back. Â I didn’t believe it was him, so I asked a question — and he responded. Â All from the web – all from a single column of Twitter.
Back then Twitter was more manual, more organic, more authentic. Â You would read someone’s bio line, visit their web site, follow them and start a conversation. Â I remember when Guy was writing his last book “Reality Check” his tweets would come from his living room where the kids were watching Sponge Bob and he was writing his book. Â I had never really met Guy Kawasaki. Â I had read his books but here were a few thousand of us getting to know each other a little deeper beyond the PR and the hype.
Then millions of people joined Twitter and while playing with a variety of applications and tools – I’ve accumulated more followers than I can build relationships with. Â So, now I use Tweet Deck and I’ve created a new column to replicate the experience I once had with my original Twitter stream. Â The new column is called “Tweeps” and it consists of as many of my original Twitter friends as I run across. Â Guy Kawasaki no has some help with his Twitter account. Â An assistant posts articles from Alltop – but he’s still there, you just have to watch to see which tweet is his.
My point in all this is that real human relationships can’t be automated. Â Somewhere along the learning curve of Twitter, we’ve lost sight of what it is really about. Â The concept of Twitter is about MORE than letting people know that you were having a cup of coffee at the local shop. Â But it’s also not meant to be some mass marketing spamming tool of direct messages offering downloads and sales pitches.
I’m seriously thinking about picking one Twitter account and totally weeding out the people that don’t fit and that I don’t have the time and energy to build real relationships with. Â I don’t mean to be cruel, I just mean to be real.
I’ve played with a variety of automated Twitter applications that send direct messages to people that follow me and then autofollow them – I’ve stopped those. Â I’ve really made the commitment to use at least one Twitter account purely for the Twitter experience of building virtualy relationships with interesting people.
What I’ve learned from this Twitter reverie is that I don’t like or prefer to use Twitter as a direct marketing tool. Â I will use it to communicate information that I think might be valuable to my followers, but I’m not going to use it for blatant self-promotion.
What about you? Â I’m curious to know what your thoughts are on this.
Agree with you and your take on Guy’s part auto, part real networking. Everyone can automate their tweets but what the heck is the purpose of that? It is recognizable and increasingly a turn-off. For social media to truly work, you have to invest time. It is part of relationship building and GOOD relationships don’t just occur.
People get frustrated and underestimate the time social networking takes. It is a long-term investment, not a quick fix.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Since day one I have not automated anything in my Twitter account. At first, it was because I didn’t know how. But soon, I was getting automated “thanks for following me and go buy something from me at my site” DMs. I knew, at that point, that I would continue to manually send out “thanks for following me” notes, and as you know, I do it with video. This is what I did to set myself apart. Sure, it takes a whole lot of time to do, but I think to create relationships, trusting ones, that you have to let people see the real you. Take the time- meet some people. I even remember meeting someone at a Bob Evans once, who I had only previously spoke to on the phone. That relationship, even though we are many miles apart now, still exists.
In truth, immediately i didn’t understand the essence. But after re-reading all at once became clear.
I really like your blog and i respect your work. I’ll be a frequent visitor.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Since day one I have not automated anything in my Twitter account. At first, it was because I didn’t know how. But soon, I was getting automated “thanks for following me and go buy something from me at my site” DMs. I knew, at that point, that I would continue to manually send out “thanks for following me” notes, and as you know, I do it with video. This is what I did to set myself apart. Sure, it takes a whole lot of time to do, but I think to create relationships, trusting ones, that you have to let people see the real you. Take the time- meet some people. I even remember meeting someone at a Bob Evans once, who I had only previously spoke to on the phone. That relationship, even though we are many miles apart now, still exists.
@CL – I want to commend you on your commitment to organic Twitter relationships. It certainly isn’t easy or efficient, but what you’ll find is that you will have higher “response” followers. There are two schools of thought on follower strategies. The first is to build a large number of followers. I can see where that has value – but I’m still a believer in targeted followers. For example – I’d rather have 100 followers where 60 click on my link and do the call to action, than 1000 followers where 60 click on the link. Even though the same number of people acted – it takes more “energy” to manage 1000 relationships than 100.