Can We Clean Up Follow Friday? Please.

If you are using Twitter then you know about Follow Friday (#FF). It is a bit of a tradition and one of the oldest practiced in the Twitterverse (Twitter talk for the stuff on Twitter).  Lately I've been less than a fan of the day. It boils down to my opinion about the manner in which some tweeps (that's Twitter talk for people who use Twitter) are practicing the tradition.

The idea originated from @Micah (according to Mashable) as a way of suggesting a couple of people to follow and soon spread rapidly. The intent is great. You suggest people you like to follow to me (and your other followers ) and we all do the same. The process is simple. You just include the hashtag #FF* (Twitter talk for using the # sign in front of a word of letters to tie it to a specific theme)  in your tweet and mention the people you would like others to check out. The timing is concise. You do this on Friday and on Friday only. Before and after #FF we are about our regularly scheduled tweeting. So, what's not to like?

Lately #FF has become a post fest. Many people are listing the maximum number of people in a single tweet with only the #FF hashtag. They do this not once or twice but incessantly as if going through their entire following. Several times I have visited an individual's tweet stream (more Twitter talk but I'm not explaining. Use your imagination) and seen nothing but a long list of hundreds of #FF posts packed with peoples user names and the hashtag. Then there are those who get crazy with the Retweets (RT is more Twitter talk. Buy Twitter for dummies if you are still lost) of their #FF mentions. Someone #FF with my user name and I RT it. Then someone else RTs it and I RT it again. Last Friday I saw so many #FF packed posts, I felt - well - dirty - as in "solicitation" dirty. ugh. 

It's insanity tweeple. Can that many people really know and like that many tweeple? All at once? It just feels wrong, phony and bad. Bad tweeple. Bad.

What to do? Options abound.  So we shall have a list. We shall. Let's call it the Clean Up #FF List! It will be a list of 3 (I love talking in rhymes). I'll be posting a daily list of 3 #FF Clean up ideas. Please join me in my quest to clean up #FF!

Tomorrow #1 - Don't be a #FF Pimp!

*Note: the original hashtag for Follow Friday was #FollowFriday, but it got shortened to #FF so the #FF pimps to get in more mentions (yes. I'm ranting).

To Tweet or Not to Tweet - 5 Tips

Twitter is a rapidly growing platform. I enjoy using Twitter both personally (@WilliamsKim) and professionally (@BEMinteractive). A recent Tweet from (@PracticalWisdom) about tweeting in a meeting got me thinking: As more people value Twitter for communication and information sharing, when is it ok to Tweet in a meeting and when should we refrain?

I'll share a personal prejudice and then 5 tips for your consideration. I'm over 50, so my educational era (error?) is one that preceded much of the technology that we enjoy today. I was exposed to classrooms, lectures and presentations when the speaker was due unwavering attention. To talk, shuffle papers, or read something other than handouts/outlines was disrespectful. I'm accustom to something akin to lofty respect for those who stand before you to teach, inspire and guide. Multitasking electronic communication - even electronic note taking - fractures this paradigm.  I've experimented with tweeting in a variety of settings and had some useful and some embarrassing (that's another post) results. So, what of tweeting during meetings and other gatherings?

 I think there are certain environments that are more appropriate than others for tweeting. Here some suggested guidelines:

1. Consider the setting. If it is a Tweet-Up event, then a certain amount of twitter activity is expected. However, don't assume that everything is up for grabs. There may be moments when someone is presenting or speaking and needs you attention. If you are meeting with your boss, tweeting about the conversation might be a bit much.

2. Ask the Speaker/Leader. If an event has a formal speaker scheduled, ask about their preference regarding tweeting.

3. When in doubt don't tweet. You can always make notes to tweet or blog/tweet about later.

4. Consider your followers. If you are a 3-4 tweet a day person, you can alarm your followers if you start sending 10-20 meeting notes or quote snippets out while attending a 1 hour Tweet-Up.

5. Determine your goal for the event. If you are there to promote or share information "real-time" via Social then your use of Twitter is helpful. However, if you are attending to learn something new, there is some research that seems to indicate that electronic multi-tasking (especially via twitter) may interfere with your ability to hear and retain complex information. 

Fast Company Social Influence Experiment

I recently discovered this Fast Company experiment. It looks most interesting not only for the ‘contest’ nature of the program, but as an exercise in using Social to Market to those committed to Social. Take a minute and follow the link, let the page load and check out the cool collage!

Fast Company is searching for 2010's Most Influential Person Online. You are more influential than you think. http://fcinf.com/v/dan4

They tell me ...

"Kim,

Thank you for participating in Fast Company's The Influence Project.
You're about to find out how influential you really are.

Your unique, personalized 'influencer' URL is:

http://fcinf.com/v/dan4/welcome

Click on the above link, and start influencing!

Remember:
1) You can use any means to spread your unique link to your online network.
We shortened it for you so you can share on Twitter and Facebook.
2) Your goal is to influence as many people to click on it as possible.
3) You want those people to sign up as well, since they will be spreading
your influence along with their own.
4) You can track how your influence has grown, where it's led, and where you
stand at any time on the site.
5) Your picture is going to be in the November issue of Fast Company
magazine, where we'll reveal the most influential person online!

Thank you,
The Fast Company team"

You're Welcome???

6 things I Hate About Social Media and Why I'm Not Stopping

1. Social Media consumes time like a hot dog eating record setting chow hound! Sure, you can manage the time by planning your Social Media activity around goals and a set strategy, and you can use third party tools (Hoot Suite, CoTweet, etc) to manage multiple accounts and platforms - but in the end, it ALWAYS bites off one more chuck of time than you planned - and then your lost...

2. Social Media eliminates the art of descriptive and erudite conversation. No matter how many links, abbreviations and pictures you include in your tweets, or how descriptive your Facebook status is, you'll never capture the beauty and eloquence of a single paragraph as uttered by the likes of Garrison Keillor. Sometimes conversations need to ramble and flower with articulacy.

3. Social Media is overrun with self proclaimed experts selling Social Media skills. Every day I have to wade through DMs, emails, blog comments, Facebook suggestions and LinkedIn invitations from Social Media sellers just to use Social Media. It feels like listening to a hoard of doctors scream their prescriptions at me as I walk to the medicine cabinet to take the medication I already have.

4. Social Media restricts communication to short, cursory blasts of information and replaces interpersonal communication with information exchange without human context. Social Media is rampant with one way information presentation. Everyone is 'telling' and there is a real lack of mutual discovery of new awareness by virtue of caring conversation. What I would give for a single "ah ha!" moment out of Social Media.

5. Social Media gets too intimate, too fast. Your Social Media sharing tells me too much about your life and preferences without me having to get to know you - at all. Intimacy doesn't follow shared experience via actual time spent together on Social Media, it comes just by virtue of my data stream crossing yours (didn't "Ghost Busters" warn us about crossing streams?)

6. Social Media hurts my brain in a BORG like way. The pace, variance and mass of information traveling via Social Media is mind numbing. Perhaps because I'm 'old school' and not a proficient multitasker, but I find my mind gets tired from so much incoming data and not enough time to process and assimilate that data - much less the time to reflect on the meaning and ramifications of said data. I feel like I am being sucked into the collective mass of information without the space to remain in touch with my thoughts, my ideas, my perspective.

Having said all of this, I am still an avid fan and user of Social Media and don't plan to stop. For all of its quirks and peculiarities Social Media does offer a novel and unique access to others and information. Social Media is the voice of the masses. It is a ground swell movement through which we all get to speak and influence our world. News is quickly dispensed (if sometimes erroneously) and public opinion is rapid fire available on social, political, business and consumer issues - and much more. Social Media is becoming a platform for businesses to more directly engage consumers and has the potential to evolve into a new and more agile way of marketing. It may be that in a matter of months all of this may change and we may remember the Social Media craze as a flash in the pan occurrence (I don't think so really), but at least I can say I was there when.

Tweeting for Mother's Day Because of My Mom

Today I sent some tweets about my Mother's wisdom. Part of the series is captured below. Find more via your twitter account by searching the #WhatMomDid hashtag.

7:38pm, May 09 from HootSuite

#WhatMomDid - a series of Mother's day tweets about my mother's lessons 2010

williamskim
7:29pm, May 09 from HootSuite

Sometimes you have to hike up you courage and take a chance.#WhatMomDid

desertlioness
5:22pm, May 09 from TweetDeck

RT @WilliamsKim: My mother taught me that laughter is always good for you and most of time acceptable. #WhatMomDid

williamskim
2:38pm, May 09 from HootSuite

If something is bothering you it's best to talk about it - #WhatMomDid

williamskim
2:36pm, May 09 from HootSuite

Taught me that God always has your back and mom always has your heart. #WhatMomDid

Poetic_line
11:40am, May 09 from Twitterrific

RT @williamskim: Mother taught me that forgiveness hurts less than hate. #WhatMomDid

williamskim
10:53am, May 09 from Twitterrific

#WhatMomDid - a series of tweets about a mother's lessons for Mothers' Day 2010.

williamskim
10:47am, May 09 from Twitterrific

Makes me laugh! #WhatMomDid often at myself

williamskim
10:46am, May 09 from Twitterrific

When you hurt so bad you want to quit life, surviving is the first step to thriving. #WhatMomDid

williamskim
10:44am, May 09 from Twitterrific

Mom showed me that life will often give you much more and less than you expect, and acceptance makes both work for you #WhatMomDid

williamskim
10:41am, May 09 from Twitterrific

From mom I learned that children should only do some of what parents do. #WhatMomDid

williamskim
10:39am, May 09 from Twitterrific

My mother taught me that laughter is always good for you and most of time acceptable. #WhatMomDid

williamskim
10:38am, May 09 from Twitterrific

From mom, I learned that my best and my worst - aren't.#WhatMomDid

andibob
10:35am, May 09 from Twitterrific

RT @williamskim: #WhatMomDid My mother gave me a love for poetry

williamskim
10:35am, May 09 from Twitterrific

Mother taught me that forgiveness hurts less than hate.#WhatMomDid

williamskim
10:34am, May 09 from Twitterrific

#WhatMomDid My mother gave me a love for poetry

williamskim
10:32am, May 09 from Twitterrific

Because of my mother I see more of nature's beauty. #whatmomdid

Top 5 Places NOT to Tweet

As much as I love twitter and as often as I feel compelled to share real time thoughts, data, experiences and feelings with my Tweeple - there are just some places and times NOT to Tweet.

I only mention this because I have either wanted to or know someone who has...


1. A Funeral - Can you imagine the grave-side tweet? "The casket is almost in the ground. Off to Star Bucks in 15"

2. Church - "This sermon is powerful and long! " - Please! Leave the smart phone at the door. It is WAY too distracting and downright rude to have a phone interrupt a sacred moment and there are times when we should unplug from technology to be with one another and the Divine.

3. Cinema - "OMG! Taylor Lautner just took his shirt off!" Really? Can't your commentary on New Moon wait until after you've watched the entire movie and I don't have to be blinded by your phone screen?

4. Theatre - True confession. I did tweet during the intermission of a play I attended recently, and I SO wanted to share some of the laughter from the musical comedy as it happened - but really, should I?

5. During Sex - I promise you - someone has, or at least tweeted as such. I don't even want to know how or WHY!?

So, what would you add? Has your tweeting gone too far? Gotten you in "twouble?"

Digital Disengagement

Digital Disengagement

I'm confessing upfront that I don't know where this experiment will lead, but I do know that I must do it.

I have been spending too much time engaged with the Internet lately. Between my work (Digital Marketing Agency) and my personal 'play' in the realms of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Four Square, I have been constantly engaged with the digital world. I enjoy all of the connections that this interactive world allows. I have people who I know and value only via the web and others who share with me in the flesh-and-blood world and enhance that sharing via the virtual world. I enjoy the pace of interactions, the laughter, the positive massages and the extension of myself that Digital allows me.

My work involves some measure of interaction on the web, as well. Yet, when I really analyze my work-related time (and I have this week), very little other than email and research is critical to my goals vocationally.

I do enjoy the digital world and its constantly changing and ever teaching environment keeps me stimulated and growing, but I am paying a price.

Here's the rub. I've noticed some changes in my life - more my experience and enjoyment of life - that just won't do. I will not go into the details here, but will generalize my concern thus: I am not a natural child of the digital world and to continue to process and engage at such an intense and constant level is tiring and is changing the way I think, process and most importantly the way I care for myself.

So, here's my confession. I will be backing away from the Internet. If you are a regular reader here, you will likely not notice a difference in my blogging frequency. Blogging, as I practice it, is less about frantic, quick thought and more about thinking, writing, and creating. I'll not stop blogging. I am backing off of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in terms of frequency of interactions. The same is true with my non-work related email interactions.

I will be blocking time (some of the 86,400 seconds of every day) for non-digital engagement, and limiting my online time with a timer. My commitment is to the next 21 days. Already, this weekend as refreshed my spirit as I have only spent 3 hours online and left my iPhone sitting by itself for hours at a time. I have spent the newly reclaimed time: hiking, reading, listening (just sitting and listening) to music and song lyrics, playing with my dogs, and talking face-to-face with family and friends. I like it.

Wish me success.


Photo taken October 2008, Appalachian Trail Hike

5 Signs Twitter Has Destroyed Your Writing

1. You use the shortest words possible – distilling your vocabulary to sprite-like verbiage (a phrase you would never us on twitter)

2. Compound sentence structure disappears; therefore there are no flowing poetic descriptions.

3. Characters begin talking in short less than 140 character, abbreviated, direct thoughts.

4. When discussing back story, sentences begin with RT @Character’sname and a quote from earlier in the text.

5. You spend time pondering how tweet shrink and url shorteners can be applied to the editing process.

Or, you find yourself writing a short, 5 part post in the affects of Twitter on Writing.

Socail Media Connections and #favsay

I'm truly enjoying my involvement with Social Media - Blogger, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to be exact.

First, I invite you to connect with me on any or all of those platforms (see sidebar Social Media buttons).

Also, I would like to invite any of you who are using Twitter to join me in a conversation that I've started about Favorite Sayings- #favsay.

Over the years, we all hear and commonly use certain sayings or expressions that we like. A few of mine are: "My get up and go, got up and went," "I'm finer than frog hair," "That just makes my ass want a cup of coffee!"

So, what are your favorite sayings? Feel free to share them here and with me on Twitter - remember to include the hash tag #favsay

Accidently Developing A Personal Brand

I launched this website and moved my blog over here just a few months ago. Now that I've settled into the new design and look, I'm very pleased. Thanks to the folks over at BEM Interactive (my employer - nothing like a little brown nosing) for helping me set things up and hosting the site.

This feels very much like my place. The design rightly reflects my personal energy and approach - right down to the rolling steam off the coffee cup. I'm always ready for some creativity over a cup of coffee.

"The other day" I attended a Linking Greensboro event and won a door prize of a free business card design from a local graphic artist and marketing consultant. We met, and I simply directed her to this site for artistic direction. Along with information she gleaned from our conversations, she designed a wonderful card for me to use to promote my non-employment self for speaking and teaching engagements. The design of the card, front and back, is below.

All of this to say, THANK YOU Danielle Hatfield (@dhatfield) for a professional, playful and accurate representation of me!