Plurk, Friendfeed, Twitter–who cares?
There have been some ongoing conversations this week where people are saying, “Should I join Plurk?” or “I joined Plurk…am figuring this out.”
I say, who cares? We’re so caught up in how many people are following us or how many people we are following. I’m bemused at my current follower to following ratio of 73% because I know it’s the high school instinct of “wanna be popular” kicking in every time I take a look at those numbers. Then again, there are a few “spammy” followers who want to say, “Hey I’m a company you should know about” or “I have a blog you should read.”
Followers like “CashGiftingPays”…I’ve now caught up to your games and I’m saying, dude that does not work. I’m getting over the excitement of having followers, so there!
Here is my personal policy on “following.” I think marketers have to pay attention to this because I’m not talking about simply advertising things. I am talking about engaging your consumers.
Let’s not forget that the value in any one of these tools is in the conversations that we have with one another. At least that is true for me. I look at the links that people attach to their brief 140 word bios to see if they are worth following. If you are a business trying to say, “Hey, I’m here, and I’m following you,” that doesn’t create any relevance.
I follow people I admire and also my due diligence in following others back as a thank you. These make up my group of peers and mentors. Then, there is a third group of people who are the most serendipitous: the ones I start having conversations with elsewhere. They make up mainly two groups of people
1) Co-workers, meaning people I work with on projects of interest
2) Fellow bloggers
The value in this is having conversations that lead to events, the discovery of new tools and new insights, and most importantly having a supporter or two in my daily life in a space that is still very elusive to most.
So, before you join Plurk and get all overexcited because you now have a new opportunity to be popular somewhere or follow social media gurus like a sheep following the herd, think it through. (I am guilty of both) but I think in the case of Twitter and sometimes FriendFeed, it was a good move. I am learning so much from everyone.
Do you really need a new app to manage and are you having solid authentic conversations right now? Make sure you have friends, fans or followers that you can trust and give them the quality time that they need. Find quality conversations instead of quality apps.
Also, if you are someone with a ton of followers, does it creep you out when you get a few more? For example, I follow people I respect and/or admire, but would you find this weird?
This in vague response to: Human3rror.com, What the Plurk?
