Tweet of the week
This one made me laugh out loud:
Just made my son lunch. He wants Hod Gog. Thank goodness I speak two year old!
@Tiphers2
Tiffany Antoun
Follow Tiffany, she’s an uber creative person and married to the ever cool Ramy Antoun
twitterTag Archive -
Twitter Housekeeping
If left unchecked, your Twitter space can get overwhelming and the result is that you become a lame Tweep. I have a few things I do regularly to keep things tidy and happy.
Prolegomena: Twitter is a mostly open public forum if you are not interested in connecting with people you don’t already know then you should stick to Facebook because you are missing the point of Twitter and breaking the internet. I wrote a post about the Facebook and Twitter relationship.
Following
Following someone does not mean you are listening. Following is an acknowledgment that you see that they are a real person with something legitimate to bring to the table and not a spammer/gamer. If you follow me and are a real person with an avatar, bio and a link, then I will follow you back. This doesn’t mean that I am listening to you however.
LISTening
This is how I organize who I am actually listening to. Twitter lists are subsets of twitter users that allow you to pay attention to a smaller group of people. This works best when you use a Twitter client (I use Tweetdeck) that has columns or tabs to display different feeds. A couple of my favorite lists are one of my colleagues in my field and another list, which is private, called; ‘don’t miss’. That one is a list of close friends and other people that I don’t want to miss. Making it private makes it so that they don’t know they are on the list but more importantly other people can’t see that they are not on it.
I do keep a column of everyone I follow and look at it a lot, but the shelf life of a tweet in a stream of thousands is pretty short.
Unfollowing
The most rocking tool ever for pruning your Twitter account; Manage Flitter. Manage Flitter looks at my account and allows me to drop people in bulk. About once a month I go there and drop everyone who isn’t following me back. I’m on Twitter for the conversations and relationships not to simply consume your content. That’s the main function that I use it for, but it will also let you sort out people who Tweet too much, don’t tweet enough, don’t have a profile pic, have certain keywords in their bio or tweet certain things.
You may have seen me follow you more than once because you didn’t follow back and your name came up somewhere and I followed you again, I’m pretty sure this has happened more than a few times for some people I follow. This is because when I do clean up my Twitter once a month I unfollow everyone who isn’t following back.
That’s how I live in the twitternets. It’s not perfect but it works for me.
How are you keeping things organized?
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Follow Friday revisited
At it’s core, #followfriday is a great show of solidarity in the Twitter-sphere and I think in the past it used to be a great resource for connecting with new tweeps.
Fast forward to last Friday and this is what most #ff tweets look like:
#ff @awesometweet @someguy @myhomie @billy @rerun @obama @moartweets @lazerdab @techblog @blahblahblah
This gives me no compelling reason to follow any of these people. I’m guilty of it just as much as the next person.
Last Friday I decided to make a change and actually make a change in my #followfriday behavior. I started by caring.
Who gets a Follow Friday tweet?
I scroll through my mentions column in Tweedeck and look for people who have engaged me this last week. That’s rule number one for me; you don’t get #ff love unless you are a two way communicator.
The formula
#ff –> @tweep [something they are] + [something they do]
Try to say two things in the #ff tweet; what they do and who they are. This gives your followers some real insight into them. They might act on the #ff because they have common ground vocationally or they like what you tweeted about their personality.
example:
“#ff –> @tweep music lover and a cooking guru”
It’s a little thing…but it might make a big difference.
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You need Facebook and Twitter
I have this conversation often:
Me: “Are you on Twitter?”
Them: “No; I’m already on Facebook”
Every time I have this conversation an angel gets it’s wings…clipped.
It does go the other way…although less often. There are Twitter users who are above using such blue collar social networks like Facebook.
Truth is, when done right, Facebook and Twitter are very different spaces and it is my opinion that if you want to rock at social media you need both.
I’ve shared this analogy with a lot of people and even mentioned it in a post or two.
Twitter is your coffee shop
At the coffee shop you connect with both people you know already and people you don’t know in a public space.
Twitter is quite the same. You will most likely initially connect with people you already know and then be introduced to people you don’t know and eventually make your own connections.
Twitter works best when you are open to meeting people you don’t know and connecting. This will be the biggest hurdle for people who have been on Facebook for a long time before getting on Twitter. Truth is, if you’re not willing to meet people and network, Twitter will not click and you’ll give up.
Quick tips for Facebook-ers moving to Twitter
- Do: Follow people you don’t know
- Don’t: Post pictures of your kids in the bath tub
- Do: Engage in conversations
- Don’t: Just be a broadcaster
Facebook is your living room
Your living room is for people you already know. Sometimes the people you know will bring people you ‘kinda’ know to your living room but for the most part it is people you know that come over to your house. Not everything that happens in your living room should be made public and most of the conversation that happens there is only interesting to people who know you.
Facebook is at it’s best when you share content and interact with people you know. People who use it as a networking space tend to come off as spammers and get ignored.
Quick tips for Tweeps moving to Facebook
- Do: Upload lots of photos of your kids
- Don’t: Add people you don’t know, that’s not the point of Facebook
- Do: Connect with your mom
- Don’t: Play Farmville
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Personal communication layers
Earlier this week I wrote about communication layers for organizations. Looking at your toolbox of communication apps and spaces it is important to categorize them in terms of context and voice. Who is the targeted recipient of the content and how do you voice it?
Here are the communication layers I use personally and the context and voice that I have in them starting with the outer layer and working my way in:
Twitter | the coffee shop
This is a public space. And like a coffee shop the content you broadcast is targeted at people you know, but it is overheard by people who may be listening. If they like what you have to say the may chime in and you make a new connection. This works the other way too.
Blog | my platform
This is my space. My words. This is where I give away the best thoughts I have to the world and engage in conversation about those thoughts.
Facebook | my living room
My living room is for people that I actually know. It’s not for strangers. I’ll accept friend requests from people I have a connection with but I keep my feed trimmed pretty tight so that it’s just family and close friends that I interact with. I’ll add that I treat Facebook email just like regular email. And I block every app from my feed (farmville).
Email | grand central
I have been trying really hard lately to reduce how much email I handle by pushing a lot of the interaction to Twitter and/or in person. When I need to document something or handle some details this is the place to keep it. I use Gmail and all the awesome GTD features like labels and server-side filtering to keep this place squeaky clean and efficient. I try to turn email around in 24-72 hours. I’m currently in the habit of working through email in the morning only…in one sitting. If you need me today then you need to move down a layer to Twitter DM/Text.
Twitter DM/Text Message | my phone
In this shrinking world where we are connected with more and more people, Twitter DM has replaced a lot of phone calls for me and in my world it carries the same priority as a text message (be warned, if you abuse it I will drop you. I’m talking to you auto DM’ers). Talking on the phone is so inefficient that I rarely answer when I don’t know who it is and I schedule just about every call I make on my calendar because it has become the new meeting for me.
In Person/Video Chat | get it done
When it’s time to get stuff done I go in person or video chat…not the phone. I hate the phone. For as unproductive as it is it takes up too much time and mind space.
Meetings | avoid them
I won’t even classify them as a necessary evil, they’re just plain evil. OK, maybe I speak too harshly. The traditional meeting is evil and unproductive. Lately I have been scheduling meetings for like 12 minutes in the hall. I picked up this tip form the book; Rework. It works well. Meetings aren’t social time…just get stuff done and go rock!
What are your layers looking like?
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Communication Layers
Technology and the communication tools that come with it are supposed to make things better. More productive. More Efficient.
I am a fan of tools, if they work and if my team will use them.
Here’s a run down of the workflow of communication layers that I’m trying to implement with the staff and leaders at Gateway Church. Starting with the outside/front door communications and moving toward the internal staff communications.
Public Spaces
Main Website
This is still our main portal with the most content and traffic. It is voiced so that people with no affiliation with our organization can understand the content and navigate to the info they will be most interested in. People who are a part of our organization still use it and it is a very important tool for communicating with them but it is targeted at people who are not yet a part of our community.
Organization’s Twitter and YouTube channel
A companion to the website, our twitter account is voiced for people who are not yet a part of our community but is used also for communicating with insiders. YouTube videos are voiced to people not affiliated with us.
Organization’s Facebook Page(s)
I may get some disagreement here but I think Facebook is for people who have accepted your brand or organization as a part of their life at one level or another. Yes, some may find Facebook as a front door to your organization, but the voice and interactions on it are geared toward your community.
Organization’s Blog
This may differ for you in where you place your organization’s blog in these layers; but for us, a non-profit church, it fits in here. We find that it is a place that gets most traffic from Facebook and is read by community members. It serves as a place to provide more detailed info than Facebook.
Community Space
We are rolling out an app called SoChurch that is launching this month to provide more robust communication and group management for our church. Facebook can’t quite handle the functionality that we need. This also provides a way for us to voice directly to and with insiders. The app will work with Facebook and Twitter so that members won’t need to worry too much about tending to another social media profile.
Internal and Employee Communication Layers
There are a plethora of tools for communicating and implementing one without understanding where it fits in the layers will just frustrate your team and put everyone on different pages making an attempt at improving workflow do just the opposite.
Here are the layers we use, ordered by time sensitivity:
Face to Face | Real Time
Need an answer now? Don’t email, walk to their desk.
Instant Messaging/Video Chat/Phone Call | Real Time
We use Google Apps so we are all on a common platform for IM and video chat. We are also distributed throughout the city of Austin so face to face isn’t always an option. This may be true for you if you are on a large campus. I like IM a lot because a lot of ground can be covered while at the same time team members can multi-switch and keep moving on other things. A phone call works but requires more attention than an IM and can slow you down.
Text Message/Twitter DM | +/- 15 minutes
Not quite real time but close. If you don’t hear back in 15 minutes assume they are out of pocket and you may have to move to a slower platform.
Yammer | 1-4 hours
We use yammer for this layer and so far I’m digging it. Not everyone on your team will sign up for Twitter nor is all that content appropriate or helpful to the Twitter community. Yammer works like Twitter as far as functionality and it takes some training to get your team up to speed. This has helped us trim down a lot of email that should have never been emailed; “check out this link” or “what is everyone doing for lunch?” and it has even replaced more useful emails too.
Email | 24-72 hours
Email is not a real time communication tool! It’s not a project management tool either for that matter. I can say that by bringing in Yammer and Google apps my internal email has been cut in half or better. If you can establish with your team that you will not respond to email for at least 24 hours…you will be 90 percent of the way there in terms of communication efficiency. I recommend turning an auto-responder on that let’s people know that you will respond to their email in a day or two. I do this every couple months to remind people that there may be a better way to get a hold of me.
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Time for change?
I’ve been on Twitter since soon after it launched and I signed up with a handle I had used for many sites; Locustfist. It has a ring to it. It’s catchy. It means something as posted here.
I’m thinking about changing it for a couple reasons.
1. I hear the comment that it sounds like some kind of karate technique. I am far from a fan of the martial arts so that rubs me the wrong way.
2. It’s misspelled a lot. I miss tweets.
3. It isn’t my real name. I just want to be me.
So unless you come up with a compelling reason why I should keep it, I will be changing it this week. If you’re following locustfist you won’t have to change anything, you’ll just notice that my user name has changed.
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Internet Campus Answers | Part 1 – toolbox
I get tweets, emails and phone calls weekly from people asking various questions about how we rock the internet campus at Gateway Church. It’s probably a good idea for me to put those thoughts and answers in one place.
Read the rest of the series – internet campus answers
Some of these things will seem obvious to some readers…bare with the new guys for a minute.
Twitter & Tweetdeck
It’s a non-negotiable that you have twitter and use it, and I have yet to see a Twitter client that can match Tweetdeck. In Tweetdeck I am managing 5 Twitter accounts via 19+/- different columns. I can manage Twitter search feeds, lists and more.
Personally I have two Twitter accounts because I use one for missional content and one for leadership content. I was finding that the conversations I was having with church leaders around the country was so much different than the ones I was having with everyone else that I was selling someone short and hurting my message, so I launched @vincemarotte for churchie stuff. You can read my thoughts on Missional Social Media at ChurchCrunch.com.
Gmail & Google Apps
You gots to have Gmail to be a communication Ninja. For real. Stop asking why and just get an account. Calendar, docs (with sharing and collaboration), chat, video chat, RSS reader and even manage multiple email accounts, I mangage 7.
TokBox
Tokbox.com is a multi-user video chat platform and 90 percent of your needs can be accomplished with the free account. Online meetings, online small groups, interviews and more. It’s hard to believe something so rad can be free.
Android
I love android. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is incredible, but since I live in Google, the real time syncing and the communication features of Android are tough to beat.
Textmate
Andrew turned me on to Textmate and it quickly became my text editor of choice on Mac. Light, fast and clean; everything you could ask for.
Devonthink
With the exception of my journal, I more or less run paperless and Devonthink helps with that. In a nutshell it’s a searchable dumping ground for all my data.
What are your weapons of choice?
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