The Daily Thing

A long, long time ago I joined Twitter. That was before all the celebrities and the mad rush by the general masses caused it to explode into a web phenomena. Back then it was more frequently down than up and the “We’ll be right back” message was an hourly occurrence. I’ve got to say Twitter has come a LONG, LONG way but with it’s growth there are some things that have begun to annoy me. Here’s my short list of pet peeves on Twitter.

1. Not everyone on Twitter is a “social media expert”.

Just because you had a MySpace and a Facebook account with 5,000+ followers you are not a social media expert. You are a social chameleon not an “expert”. You had FOLLOWERS and most likely you had them because you followed THEM first. Don’t let it go to your head.

If you’re Twittering for a business or representing your company ask you IS or IT guy to see the stat log. How many visitors are coming from Twitter? Ask your sales manager how many sales referrals are coming from Twitter? How many buyers mentioned they received more information on Twitter? and how many clients received customer service (more than you Twittering the phone number to your customer service department) on Twitter? If it’s not impacting your companies bottom line in a positive way you’re just Twittering on company time and your boss is letting you get away with it.

2. More than just links.

You got a blog, that’s great. We read your blog. Yup, we do. We don’t need the automatic Twitter announcing you blogged. We’ll get to your website in a while. Don’t worry. People who haven’t found your website will see it if you link it in your profile. Honestly, I find 99% of the new sites I add from Twitter users by viewing their profile.

If you’re using a plug-in in WordPress or Drupal, disable it. It’s annoying.

3. Adds are rhetorical.

Hey, I added you! I want to see what you have to say. Say something clever. Direct Messaging me with a link to your site and a spammy comment, not clever. In fact, annoying as hell. Don’t do it. Turn off your auto answer bot or whatever you’re using to do it and just don’t.

If you feel you MUST do it because you can’t help yourself go into therapy. You have an obsessive compulsive disorder. I read your profile. I know what you’re about. I saw the link to your website. I’ve been there. Enough said. Don’t spam me.

4. I’m Dating You

Secretly I’m dating you. You don’t know it but I am. I’m doing it through Twitter. Ask people what they look for when they add someone on Twitter and what they look for when in a partner and, surprise-surprise, most of the time they’re the same.

Don’t constantly bitch about how your boss hates you or how your parents lock you in the closet or about school work or being sick all the time. No one wants to read it and they won’t. Ever notice how your friends just kind of wander off or lose interest when you’re whining? Same thing on Twitter. There are plenty of other people’s twitters to read. Don’t make us dump you.

If you found this interesting and would like to see what I have to say in 140 characters or less you can follow me on twitter by adding @loydschutte.

Marc Penn over at Wall Street Journal came out with some insteresting statistics about blogging today including the fact that roughly 1% of Americans are blogging for some source of income with 2% of those earning enough to make it their PRIMARY income. And people used to laugh and call blogging a “passing fad”.

Blogging isn’t dead, in fact it’s alive and well. Most of the blogs are now very targeted, niche blogs about specific topics, and they seem to do very well. My own YosemiteBlog.com is finally moving into fruition and soon I may be able to join that 2%.

Here are some more interesting statistics about bloggers from the WSJ article:

Wall Street Journal: Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall.

It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as “spokesbloggers” — paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around — but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.

The barriers to entry couldn’t be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.

Personally, I realized a long time ago niche blogging is the same as publishing a newspaper directed at your target audience. The real difference is you’re publishing to the web making it 1000 times easier for readers to find it. Twenty years ago a small, independent paper would expect maybe 100 readers that they’d have to work really hard for. Today the average blogger will have 100 page reads within the first week. If they’re adept at using Twitter and have good content that number would be substantially higher.