Posted by Chrysty Beverley Fortner.
I’m fully engaged in the assault on social media. I’m a warrior. I love it. I have a website to maintain for work, two blogs, a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook account, two groups, a cause and two fan pages; I text often, I live on email and Blackberry, I message through myEmma and now I “tweet.” However, I don’t yet see the true value to the one-sided conversations I have on twitter. Most of my “twittersations” are one-sided because I’m rarely sitting at a desktop reviewing who’s saying what to whom throughout each day and responding. I think I’m burned out.
I’ve committed to one tweet a day for the State Fair and abhor the 10-tweet overload I receive from some of my “followers.” People are over-tweeting and it’s getting excessive. I don’t care to know that much about anyone or anything. Am I cynical? Maybe, but I’m practical. It’s hard to calculate the ROI from an oftentimes open-ended “relationship.” I’m not old by any means, but I’m old-fashioned. I still like interaction and reciprocation. All that said, I get excited when someone “retweets” one of my announcements or mentions me in a “#follow friday.” It’s like a glorious train wreck…you can’t stop looking and you are horrified at what you see.
Do we know who really reads our tweets? Who takes action on them? Who is capitalizing from them? I am beginning to wonder if there is any more substance to the platform than feeding my own ego. Today’s blog is completely rhetorical in nature, but I really do want the answers. I can’t help but want to put a practical value on each initiative and my time.
With my website for instance, I can track visitors to my site, see which pages they viewed, know how long they were on my site and tally each city and state …that is something I can sink my teeth into. You can’t judge a tweeter by his followers, that’s for sure. There are people out there with thousands of followers who think that actually means something…then I see the content of their messages and think, “will someone think I’m like these cheesy salespeople?” Quite honestly, I’ve seen so many of these “get rich quick” or “multi-level marketing” people on twitter its scary. Is it a smoke-screen that gives an appearance of importance, of wealth and of value? It seems that you can be anything or anybody you want when the conversation is controlled by you. You can tell people anything you want about your wonderful self…whether it’s true or not. Should this frighten us about the future and integrity of social media? Again, I just don’t know the answer.
It’s a double-edged sword…now that I have followers, I am committed to sending a message…but even if I tried to stop cold turkey (I say it as if it’s like an addiction, because it is) I can’t stop…my people are WAITING…as if news from the Tennessee State Fair could change the world. Seriously, would they notice if I stopped? I’d like to think there are people hanging on my every word, but chances are, they’re just hoping that I mention them in one of my next tweets. Yep, I’m twitterfried for sure! And speaking of fried: @tnstatefair Don’t miss the TN State Fair September 11-20; home of the Deep Fried Goo Goo Cluster! It’s relentless.
