Jim Connolly Marketing

Twitter and me

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As you might already know, I stopped using my @jimconnolly Twitter account on 31st of January; one of the top 50 most followed Twitter accounts in the world.  The reason for this, was that following tens of thousands of people took up way too much time – largely because of the hundreds of Direct Messages I received each day, (usually over 500 a day and occasionally over 1,000).

By trying to’ do the right thing’, I got it all wrong!

I got it wrong.  As a community builder, I wanted to follow everyone who followed me.  This worked initially; until the numbers grew so huge, so fast, with SO MANY people feeling the need to Direct Message me! The reason the numbers grew so fast, is because I wrote a LOT here about Twitter and this is a very well-read blog.  Each post is read by thousands of people and I have posts here with 200, 300 and in one case, a post about Twitter which has over 600 comments.

In just a few months, I attracted over 23000 followers.  At the time, even Chris Brogan (a Social Media genius), had taken 2 years to attract just 15,000 more followers.  My Twitter account grew too big, too fast.

Following back

Following so many people back is what caused my problem.

I would still have seen ALL the @jimconnolly messages sent to me, without following everyone back – and these were almost always the most valuable. PLUS, I would have had MORE TIME to respond and connect with more people, because I would not have been ploughing through several thousand Direct Messages each week. But it was too late – So, I decided to leave that Twitter account.

Tweeting again “small time”

I had a ‘chat’ last Thursday with Laura Fitton @pistachio, and explained what had happened with my account and why I was no longer using it.  Laura is a REAL expert when it comes to Twitter and has always been super helpful to me. Laura explained that I could actually clear the account, so I could keep the same Twitter user name (which is my actual name,) and use it to follow friends, clients and contacts.

In 5 minutes, I had lost well over 23,000 followers.

I had an account with 0 following and 0 followers.

As a result, my @jimconnolly account is active again – BUT this time, I am only following friends, clients and those who actually want to chat with me, (which will be quite a large number in itself.) If I am not following you on Twitter and you want to get in touch without sending a tweet to me (for whatever reason) – you can contact me WITHOUT being limited to 140 characters.  After all, I have always been extremely easy to get in touch with.

I’m VERY contactable without Direct Messages!

  • You can call me on 01427 891274 if you need to speak with me.
  • You can email me via the blog, if you want to write to me.
  • You can get in touch with me via a comment on the blog, if you want to share your feedback with thousands of other people.
  • You can send a message to @jimconnolly via Twitter if you want to share your message in 140 characters.
  • You can even write to me via snail-mail – My FULL postal address is here.

I think you would agree, I make it very easy for people to get in touch.

The ‘right’ way to use Twitter!

It’s weird – we live in a society where it’s ‘cool’ to say “I’m learning all the time,” yet it’s ‘uncool’ to say; “I made a mistake and I’m putting it right!” So, I’m about to be very uncool!

I believe that each person should feel free to use their account however they want; so long as it’s not breaking any of Twitter’s rules.  For me, it’s all about the value of the connections I make and NOT how many people I have following me.  The value is in the quality, NOT the volume!

Robert Scoble @scobleizer follows 65,000 people.  Darren Rowse @problogger follows around 9,000 people and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams @ev follows around 900 people. Each uses Twitter the right way FOR THEM.

All I know for certain, is that following over 20,000 people was wrong FOR ME.

I hope you can appreciate my decision and maybe even learn something from my experience.

Focus on results – NOT hits!

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One of my favourite sayings is; “start with the end in mind.” In other words, make sure you know what your outcome is, before you decide to take action.

I was thinking about this earlier, when I received an email from a reader, who had just realised that the time and money she had been investing in marketing her website and blog over the past 18 months, had been pretty much a total waste of time!

Yes, she had seen ‘traffic’ into them increase from zero to around two thousand unique visitors a day – but it hadn’t generated anything tangible for her or her business.  In fact, it had actually hurt her business; because her time spent blogging, online networking and doing SEO had limited the amount of chargeable work she could do for her clients.

Marketing goals

This lady’s original marketing goal for her website and blog, was to showcase her skills as a business finance expert to a new audience and then convert some of these readers into paying clients.  However, she became so focused on producing regularly updated content and getting her Search Engine Optimisation ‘just right’ that she was using these numbers to track her success – rather than the actual number of new clients and enquiries she was getting.

This is a common scenario, when someone gets so involved in the mechanics of a marketing activity, that the activity itself becomes their goal – rather than a tool to help them reach their goal.

Taking stock

marketing results outcomesIf you have a commercial website or blog, how focused are you on the tangible or bankable results you get from it?

I am not talking about hits, metrics, comments or subscriber numbers – I’m talking about actual, business results, what your accountant would call your ROI (return on investment).

Here are some examples of questions we all need to ask ourselves, if we invest our time and/or money on a website or blog:

  • If your site/blog is there to generate enquiries for your business – how many is it generating each day and what quality are they?
  • If your site/blog is supposed to be generating advertising revenue, how much money is it making for you each week?
  • If your site/blog is supposed to be positioning you as an authority in your area of expertise, how many more calls are you getting from newspapers, trade publications and the media – wanting your opinions?

It does us all good from time to time, to take stock of where we are and to ensure that everything we are investing our time, money and energy in is actually taking us toward our business goals.  Otherwise, we run the risk of rowing our boat REALLY hard in the wrong direction and suddenly wondering why we are in the wrong place after all that hard work.

Why I’m leaving Twitter!

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It’s sad, but the time has come for me to leave Twitter.  At the time of writing this, the three most followed people in England are; John Cleese, Stephen Fry and then me.  I have made some great connections because of Twitter and met a lot of interesting people too.  Twitter has been a great experience for me – BUT it’s time for me to go!

Twitter’s technical problems highlighted one of my own

My Twitter account was one of many to have recently suffered from the dreaded caching error. After 5 days, it was manually fixed by Crystal in Twitter’s tech support team.  This was a blessing in disguise!

For 5 days, whilst my account was waiting to be fixed, I was unable to follow anyone or see who had followed me.  I noticed that I suddenly had lots more extra time each day, so I decided to do some Twitter research! I wanted to know just how long I actually spent using Twitter each day.

I was amazed to see that even during a fairly quiet period, I was investing an average of 2 and a half hours each day!

Even more amazingly, less than half of that time was spent actually ‘tweeting’ with people!

The rest of my Twitter time was spent dealing with the hundreds of Direct Messages I get each day and filtering through the hundreds of people who follow me each day; to see from their profile whether or not to follow them back.  This is an increasingly time consuming problem, as so many people are now doing that follow / unfollow trick, to attract auto follows and make it look like they have lots of followers.

Most of the Direct Messages I get on Twitter are people asking me; ‘please share this link with your followers Jim’ or asking me to look at their blog / website and give them some tips.  I’m also getting stacks of spam sent to me via Twitter’s Direct Message.  This all takes time to review, answer or delete. Yes, almost all of these Direct Messages are from people, who have never tweeted with me or commented here!

The 1000 people on Twitter who connect with me

Although I have over 23,000 people following me on Twitter, I found that only around 800 / 1000 or so are in regular contact with me.  These are the people you see in my Twitter stream and commenting here on the blog.  These are the people, who I built this blog and my Twitter network for.  These are the kind of people, who make Twitter the best social media site / app on the Internet (In my opinion.)

The reason I am leaving Twitter, is that it’s the other 22,000 people, who never connect with me, who require the vast majority of my time!

The sensible thing to do, was for me to find a way to focus all my energy on the people who actually ‘connect with me’  – And that’s what I will now be able to do!

How I solved my Twitter problem

One of my options, was to delete 22,250 people from my Twitter account.  This would take forever and it still wouldn’t stop the flow of new people every day; who follow my account and require filtering. Yes, I could just set up an auto-follow, so every spammer on Twitter could target me, knowing they will get an automatic follow back – but that’s not why I invested my time in Twitter and it would only help with part of the problem.

FriendFeed and Twitter

Thankfully, I have found an excellent way to communicate with everyone, who wants to keep in touch with me – WITHOUT me having to waste all those hours each week on those who don’t!

I have decided to replace what I have been doing on Twitter, with FriendFeed.

Whilst FriendFeed is not as instantly usable as Twitter, it doesn’t come with the same insane focus on followers / following either.  Just like Twitter, you can interact with people without following / subscribing to them.  However, unlike Twitter – on FriendFeed the follower / subscriber thing is far less of a big deal!  There are also no issue with Direct Messages, which ate into so much of my time each day.

This means I can focus massively more of my time on the ‘social’ side of social media.

FriendFeed will allow me to have proper, threaded conversations with all of those who want to join in or share their content with me. 

I hope to see as many of my regular Twitter pals on FriendFeed as possible; so we can continue the conversation.

However, even if you don’t want to join with me on FriendFeed, you can still find out what I am doing via Twitter!

You will still see me on Twitter, via FriendFeed

Even if you don’t have or want a FriendFeed account – you will still be able to see what I post via Twitter anyway! I am going to keep my Twitter account active; so people who want to, can still follow my stream without having to do anything. One of the great things about FriendFeed, is that it will automatically send all my updates direct via my Twitter account – so anyone following me on Twitter will be able to see them.

This is not one of those; “which is best Twitter or FriendFeed?” arguments. It’s just that FriendFeed is the best option for me right now.

UPDATE:

Over the past 48 hours, I have found that most of the people who were regularly tweeting with me, have now found me on FriendFeed; with others introducing themselves all the time! Thus, I shall not be sending my FriendFeed updates through my Twitter account.

I don’t want to just broadcast via Twitter – Twitter’s supposed to be about communicating NOT broadcasting!

Twitter follower problem

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Until earlier this morning, my twitter account had been ‘broken’ for the past 5 days!  This meant I was unable to follow anyone back; which for someone like me, with a reputation for developing communities, is a HUGE problem!  Twitter didn’t seem interested though; despite me currently being one of the top 60 most followed people on twitter!

Twitter tech support ignored me

With each passing day, the problem became more frustrating.  Over 1000 people had followed me, unaware that I was unable to follow any of them back.  I tried everything – I sent emails to twitter’s tech support, I sent ‘tweets’ to the tech support staff, I even contacted twitter’s boss Ev Williams. No one fixed the problem or even responded to me – no tweets, no emails, nothing!

Until….

I managed to find a contact, who knows someone at twitter and was kind enough to email them for me.  Then, I sent a tweet out and everything changed – within minutes!

Twitter, Scoble and FriendFeed

My 5 day old problem was fixed within 5 minutes of me sending the message below to the 22,000 people who follow me. It basically says how Robert Scoble suggested I use FriendFeed instead of twitter – along with my FriendFeed user name (which is jimconnolly)

twitter followers

Boom – 5 minutes later my problem was fixed!

What I found frustrating and disappointing, was that it was not until some well-connected people got involved, that anyone listened to me.  When they did, this 5 day problem was fixed in minutes.

Amazingly, within literally seconds of the fix, I received my first and only communication from twitter – a tweet that said; “It’s a bug : ( see status blog!” That post has been on the status blog for days and my problem had lasted for days – yet the fix and the only response I got from twitter, both arrived at the same time; 5 minutes after my post!

Twitter and me

I WILL continue to help YOU develop your twitter network; because for 99.9% of users, Twitter is still the amazing service I have always VERY PUBLICLY raved about. I will also continue to tweet, just like before.

However, I shall no longer be promoting my own twitter account via this blog; which is responsible for attracting so many of my followers (twitter associates) – until they invest in better tech support.

Apparently, my rush of new followers is what caused the problem.

Twitter is a wonderful facility!

I know the team at twitter work extremely hard, because I have spoken to people who have visited the offices and interviewed them!  That’s why I’m going to stick around.  I’m hoping that as the business model develops, some money will be invested in helping twitter’s dedicated, but overloaded tech support team. When it does, the service will be amazing!

However, based on the messages I have received since my problem started, it seems that currently, unless you have high profile contacts, are famous or your problem is very public, like the recent phishing attacks, they just don’t have the resources to respond effectively. There are exceptions to this, but my personal experience and the stack of feedback I’ve received confirms it’s a valid concern.

I can’t wait until the tech support issue is resolved and I can fall back in love with Twitter. This is only a lover’s tiff, not a divorce!

UPDATE

I just heard (10am Sunday 25th January) that Robert Scoble @scobleizer has also got the exact same problem I had; unable to follow people back. I wonder how long it will take before his problem is fixed? Will twitter fix it super fast OR will they make him wait the standard 5 days; just to make a point about how ‘evenly’ they treat all their users?

The Twitter follower mystery

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Mike Butcher – The UK & Ireland Editor for Techcrunch, sent me a couple of tweets today and also an email.  By the time Mike emailed me, he thought I had to be using a robot or something, to have developed such a great twitter network so quickly!  We spoke and by the end of our phone call, everything was fine – but the story is excellent and well worth sharing with you!

Here’s Mike’s initial tweet to me (he’s actually a really nice man when you speak with him – honest!)

Mike tweeted:

You have 22k followers, a big UK Tweeter. Your tweets are rather dull. Your blogs slow/derivative. What gives?

Although Mike had read my blog and was following me on twitter, he was amazed that other people were doing the same.

I gave Mike a very friendly reply:

I’m guessing you are asking the wrong person – Thanks for the compliment though ; )

Shortly after, Mike sent a far more friendly tweet to me:

No probs, just trying to keep you on your toes. I’m pretty dull too, but then I don’t have 22k expecting Socratic insight.

A problem with Twitter & a Journalists instinct!

Twitter is experiencing a problem as I write this; where certain people (me included) with large follower / following numbers are unable to follow people back.  My follower count has froze and anyone I follow is getting notification, but twitter isn’t allowing me to follow them.

I told Mike I would follow him, so he could send me a DM (direct message) and I did – but the Twitter problem meant he never got followed!

This, apparently, is why Mike assumed I was using a robot, to follow people and then immediately unfollow them.  It’s odd really, as I’m actually following over TWENTY THOUSAND PEOPLE back. So, he emailed me to say he thought I might be tricking Twitter.

In fairness to Mike, he’s not using twitter the way I do.  He currently has over 6,000 followers (because he’s a famous editor), but only follows less than 1,000 of them back.  That’s fine, but the complete opposite of the kind of ‘community building’ I focus my Twitter efforts on.

Twitter mystery solved!

I called Mike this afternoon, to let him know about the Twitter follow problem.  He’s actually a very nice person to speak with.  I also sent him a few links, to show how this blog and my twitter account act as two ‘outposts’ for the same, large network.

Twitter and community building

Mike’s right, it is unusual to have 22,000 followers on Twitter (and so quickly), but then it’s ALSO unusual for this blog, which was only launched in the middle of October, to already have posts with hundreds of comments.

Building your twitter network

One post here has 550 comments, all from Twitter users and all containing their twitter user names, so you can follow them! It’s called Building your twitter network and you can add your twitter details and find great new people to follow too!

It’s not as high tech as using a robot, but a network is all about people – right?

Twitter photo shock from PhotoShop

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We have all heard those stories, where someone has used PhotoShop to make themselves look younger, more handsome or thinner – right?

Well, what I am about to share with you here is what I call photo-shock!

It’s the shock someone experiences when they meet someone for the first time, who they have previously only seen very heavily PhotoShopped pictures of.

A twitter connection

I spoke with a friend last week, who told me about her shock at meeting a man for the first time; whom she had only previously communicated with via twitter.

They agreed to meet in person; as this guy is a designer and my friend had some design work, which he wanted the chance to quote for.  So, they decided it was best to meet in a public place and chose Starbucks. My friend arrived a little early, grabbed a coffee and waited.

Noticing her twitter friend was about 20 minutes late, she decided to give him a quick call, just to make sure he was OK. The weather was extremely bad and she was concerned he may have had an accident.

Imagine her surprise, when he answered the phone and told her he was already there; sitting upstairs enjoying a coffee!  Now, my friend had sat downstairs, close to the door and she watched each person come in. She told me:

“At this point Jim, I just assumed he must have arrived before I did; because I watched the door like a hawk, so that I could welcome him and ‘break the ice’.”

Even after being told where he was sitting, she STILL couldn’t spot him – until he called over to her!  Suddenly she figured out what had happened!

The picture used by her twitter friend had been so heavily PhotoShopped that it was basically a different person! As a professional designer and an expert with PhotoShop, he was able to create an amazing set of pictures of himself for his website and twitter profile; which look great – but are nothing whatsoever like he really looks.  She was genuinely shocked!

Most noticeably, the man she met seemed to be around her age (she’s 52), yet the pictures he uses online look to be closer to someone in their late twenties. He had doctored the images to change his age by around 25 years.  As she told me;

it’s one thing to pick pictures of yourself that show you in your best light or to remove the odd zit / spot; but this guy looked like the father of the guy I was expecting to meet. It instantly destroyed any trust I previously had in him.

Although this might sound like a funny story, there’s an important issue here.

What about trust?

Before someone will do business with us, they have to trust us.  They need to believe we will deliver on the service we promise or that the product we supply really will do whatever we claim it will.  If someone starts off a business relationship, behind a heavily doctored picture of them self, is it REALLY going to impress a prospective client when they learn it’s a fake?

Over to you!

If you met someone for the first time and saw that they had been using heavily doctored images of themselves online – would it create a ‘trust issue’ for you?

Do you believe, as my friend does, that this is a form of dishonesty or is it OK to use software to make yourself look as good as possible? Is there a limit, beyond which it’s unacceptable, if so, where’s that limit in your opinion?

Let us know what you think!